Issue: CRIMINALIZATION & REPRESSION

Following its preliminary findings in April, FIAN International releases a new report documenting the impacts of COVID-19 on people’s right to food. The report underlines that a number of occupational sectors and population groups are being pushed to hunger and malnutrition even further, as a result of COVID-19 mitigation measures centered around the industrial food system. Building on dozens of submissions by local and national partners around the world, FIAN International’s report also sheds light on the positive impact of solidarity actions.

According to the report, proponents of the Malthusian approach to food crises – which is based on the mathematical relation between available food (offer) and population needs (demand) – would most likely deny that there is currently a food crisis. However, this approach disregards the impact that the Coronavirus crisis is having on the physical and economic accessibility, adequacy and sustainability of food.  In other words, while food may be available, some marginalized groups are simply not able to access sufficient and adequate food, as a consequence of the pandemic.

 “In certain countries and among certain populations and occupational sectors – including people rendered poor, being discriminated against, and those working in the food system – the existence of multiple food crises is undeniable. With the pandemic, mitigation and recovery measures have often relied on the industrial food system and have neglected the role of small-scale food producers and local food systems. This approach is pushing these groups, even more so than before, to hunger and malnutrition”, says Ana María Suárez-Franco, FIAN International Permanent Representative at the UN.

Among its findings, the report highlights:

• Increasing and unregulated food prices are making food inaccessible for millions, with instances of tripling and quadrupling prices. This is happening as a result of speculation, with food price volatility affecting numerous countries, including Argentina, Ecuador, Uganda, South Africa, France and El Salvador.
• Tons of crops and livestock are being destroyed and euthanized respectively, as local markets are being shut down in Ecuador, Colombia, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Mozambique and the US. This leaves hundreds of thousands of small-scale producers with no income and millions of people with no access to fresh, diverse and healthy food.
• The US, Colombian and Ecuadorian governments, among many others, are favoring the consumption of agro-industrial and ultra-processed food by virtue of prioritizing supermarkets over local markets. Diets based on these foods exacerbate our likelihood to suffer malnutrition, thereby weakening our immune system’s capacity to resist diseases.
• Business activities that are harmful to the environment and human rights have increased as environmental policies have been relaxed and corporate lobby has strengthened during the pandemic. Concrete cases have been identified in the US, China, Cambodia, Philippines, Colombia, Bolivia and South Africa, and are reaching beyond their borders.
• Women are affected disproportionately by COVID-19. From being more exposed to domestic violence and losing their jobs in both the informal and formal sectors under lockdown measures, to facing increasing burden of unpaid care work. In some countries, because school meal is the only food family has, women might sacrifice her portion for her family members, thus impacting on their RTFN.    
• Structural racism has exacerbated the impact of the pandemic on black communities, with higher COVID-19-related hospitalizations and risk of infection, as well as overrepresentation in the jobs most affected by the pandemic.
• Lack of assistance and support to indigenous peoples have led to increasing number of deaths, particularly among elders who are seen as the wisdom, language and knowledge holders in the communities.
• Food workers, from those working in industrial meat production in Europe and the US, to migrant agricultural workers in Germany, street vendors in South Africa and fisherfolk in India, are often more exposed to infection, precarious work conditions and starvation.

Against this backdrop, the sudden lockdowns disrupting local food supply have sparked diverse solidarity actions in both rural and urban areas.  Spain, Brazil, South Africa and Colombia are examples where local communities and social movements have mobilized to ensure access to food.

“Although our governments are ultimately responsible to make sure the right to food of populations is ensured, solidarity actions have been key during the pandemic. Who knows how many families would have made it without these support networks,” says Suárez-Franco.

Indeed, some innovative ideas by these movements have gained recognition and support by local and national governments.

“Small-scale food producers are finding appropriate ways to make healthy food available through open-air markets, direct sales and other distribution channels. Together with consumers, they are organizing platforms to establish new rural and peri-urban territorial food chains. In addition to supporting such initiatives, governments need to take the step towards the transformation of our food systems: this is not only crucial to face the current pandemic, but also to tackle the impact of future ones. The clock is ticking and we need to take urgent action,” adds Suárez-Franco.

**ENDS**
Download the report.
For media enquiries please contact delrey@fian.org

The International Day of Peasant Struggle is a reminder that how we handle a crisis matters.  It highlights that by taking one path over the other we might exacerbate inequality and exclusion or prevent us from successfully tackling the looming food crisis. But most of all, this day allows us to envision a different future, one which not only builds on sustainable, transformative food systems that help eradicate hunger and malnutrition, but also values and protects those who feed the world.

As echoed in FIAN International’s Preliminary Monitoring Report on the Impact of COVID-19 on the Human Right to Food and Nutrition, current measures have had a differentiated impact on marginalized and discriminated groups, either due to a particular socio-economic status, rural or urban location, gender or region. Despite playing a crucial role in providing resilience to territories, communities and entire countries, small-scale producers and their communities are among those most affected by the measures set out to halt the spread of the virus. And rather than helping us tackle the looming food crisis, it is doing quite the contrary.

Devastating impact of current measures

Lockdowns and states of emergency declared in different parts of the world have generated devastating impacts on local production and people’s access to  adequate food. Examples include the closure of peasant markets and the hampering of food production and harvesting. In some places, seasonal – often migrant – agricultural workers and food sellers have lost their main source of income due to restrictions of movement and border control. 

Likewise livestock keepers, animal breeders, shepherds and fisher folk are often not allowed to get their products to consumers. Meanwhile in other regions, agricultural workers face precarious working conditions, including extended working hours and lack of safety measures. At the same time, organizations have claimed a lack of adequate coordinated international action between states and inter-state international institutions to keep international food supplies flowing across borders during the COVID-19 crisis.The world has been so reliant on global food chains, thereby neglecting and underestimating the power of local food systems – which respect the environment –  that we are now facing empty shelves in supermarkets and grocery stores.

Need for a “change of heart”

As the famous quote says “problems cannot be solved by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. This is what governments should realize more than ever: it is time to value the role of peasants and other people working in rural areas –especially rural women. As the main food providers to the world’s population, who also protect biodiversity, their human rights must (truly) be ensured by states, as set out in national law and international human rights law – including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas– as well as UN-endorsed initiatives to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – like the Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028. 

Peasants must maintain their capacity to produce and provide adequate food to the hundreds of thousands of communities they feed, in times of COVID-19 and beyond. On this note, states must implement appropriate economic incentives like subsidies and tax reduction for the small-scale producers and give support to transformative approaches that draw from their knowledge and experience of the former.
An adequate way out of the crisis should lead states to take measures towards diverse food systems that support  fairer societies, people’s health and ecosystems. Measures providing support to agroecological production, fostering short local circuits and supply chains, and prioritizing food markets, grocery stores, and informal food vendors are also measures that will ultimately strengthen the long-term resilience of the rural world  against natural disasters and other severe disruptions.

The question is simple: if we want to tackle this crisis, and a looming food disaster, governments have to protect and value peasants, while supporting the necessary transformation of our food systems.

For media enquiries, please contact delrey@fian.org    

Twelve years after the food price crisis in 2007/2008, the world finds itself in the midst of one of the most dramatic global, multifold, crises of our times. The pandemic of COVID-19 is not only leading humanity to an unprecedented health emergency, where the shortcomings of our health care and social systems are being most exposed, but it is also exacerbating hunger and malnutrition.

As echoed by a monitoring report released today by FIAN International, the impacts of the pandemic and the measures to stop contagion are intensifying ongoing human rights violations that prevent people’s access to adequate food. Those who are already in situations of marginalization and vulnerability due to low socio-economic status, racism, sexism and other types of discrimination are facing a higher risk of food insecurity. 

Albeit triggered by COVID-19 and the preventative measures that have been put in place to contain it, the emerging food crisis finds its foundations in decades of neoliberal policies and practices that have been exacerbating disparity and discrimination. This, the report argues, is why not only targeted measures are needed to face this pandemic, but also public policies that fundamentally change the way in which our societies are organized and the economic system operates. We simply cannot go back to normality.

The Preliminary Monitoring Report on the Impact of COVID-19 on the Human Right to Food and Nutrition lists the dire impacts of the current crisis on people’s lives and also highlights local and national responses, including by grassroots communities and social movements, that can serve as an inspiration elsewhere. On the basis of these preliminary findings and of the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition, FIAN International gives a series of recommendations for governments the world over.

Impacts on access and even distribution

People’s inclination to panic-buy and hoard food due to a fear of scarcity during times of crisis is leading to shortages of certain types of food. This means that affordable prices and availability of food are being kept out of reach for those with limited mobility or resources. Likewise, access to adequate food has been restricted by virtue of prioritizing supermarket chains over local markets and local cooperatives as food distributors. In practical terms, ultra-processed and industrialized products are more readily available than fresh and organic food sustainably produced by peasants and other small-scale food producers (like  fisherfolks), which doesn’t only have a dire impact on the income of the latter, but also prevent people from accessing healthy and diverse diets.

Indeed, restrictions in terms of access and quality are expected to impact more severely those already facing hunger and malnutrition. Simply put, those who are overweight and obese – both forms of malnutrition – who account for more than 1.9 billion and 650 million adults respectively around the world-  are more likely to develop more severe symptoms and complications when infected with COVID-19. Equally, those who are undernourished, who accounted for 821 million already before the outbreak, have a lower immunity to fight against the virus.

If measures restricting mobility to prevent contagion have deeply affected one demographic in particular, it is the hundreds of thousands of temporary, seasonal – often migrant- workers, who are unable to travel for their work. This is not only sparking concerns about loss of employment opportunities and income for this group, but also of a looming shortage of fresh produce and a substantial amount of wasted food.

Successful community, government responses

In times of crisis, calls for moral responsibility and solidarity are not always enough and state regulations are sometimes necessary. In order to counter potential food price volatility and shortages of essential foods, Argentina and Colombia have introduced measures to regulate prices and ensure rationalization of essential products. 

As shelves in supermarkets were being emptied and fresh food was piling up and perishing in local farms, peasant organizations have also actively mobilized in France and Romania to oppose the closure of peasant markets. This has led to government guidelines that clarify that local food markets should take place, while following measures to ensure sanitary conditions to prevent contagion. Similarly, social protests by food street vendors have led to significant reactions in countries like South Africa, where grocery stores, wholesale produce markets and informal food traders are allowed to remain open. This will ensure that marginalized and poor households are less at risk of food and nutrition insecurity. 

In some countries the closure of schools is reducing the access to food for children, or has replaced school feeding programs with fast food. Civil society initiatives in countries like India are advocating for programs that ensure home-delivery of nutritious meals to children, as well as to pregnant and lactating mothers. 

The current situation requires urgent action to contain the pandemic, but so too to prevent further exclusion and social injustice, concludes the report in its recommendations. From protecting the world’s main food providers, peasants and other rural workers, to ensuring tailored mechanisms to protect those most marginalized, there are a number of measures that can substantially improve the lives of millions in this looming food crisis.

You can read the report here.
We are happy to arrange interviews with our Secretary General Sofia Monsalve. Please, contact contact delrey@fian.org

FIAN International, in its role as Secretariat of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition (GNRTFN), is very concerned about the current global situation triggered by the pandemic of COVID-19. The rapid expansion of the virus is exacerbating systematic violations of the right to food and nutrition that the organization, together with other CSOs and social movements, has been fighting against for decades. It is a critical moment, not only for those affected directly by the virus, but also for those negatively impacted by measures put in place to halt its spread. 

COVID-19 is leading to a global health emergency, with the potential to trigger both a food and broader human rights crises. The impacts of the pandemic and the measures to counteract it are expected to aggravate ongoing human rights violations, as well as the structural causes that prompt them. These include the abandonment of small-scale food producers in favor of agro-industrial food production by transnational corporations, as well as the lack of social protection and policies assisting those most affected by crises of this scale. There are many other impacts, which vary from country to country, depending on their availability of resources and infrastructure, as well as on their administrative and financial capacity, among other factors. 

As echoed by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) last week, as a result of the current situation, food availability is affected in both the short- and long-term, particularly vis-à-vis those most vulnerable.

“Food access is also compromised, in particular for those working in sectors that are likely to see job losses due to the recession as well for the poor who are likely to be made worse off. Nutrition is likely to be affected as people shift diets to more affordable as well as more shelf-stable and pre-packaged foods (which may be less nutritious) and as fresh fruits and vegetables become less available due to panic buying and disruptions in food systems. Stability is compromised as the markets themselves are highly unstable leading to a great degree of uncertainty. Lastly, people’s ability to exercise agency over their relationship to food systems is compromised as inequalities are increased,” reads the CFS statement. 

 

As COVID-19 continues to spread, several members and partners of the GNRTFN have identified and tracked the impacts of the crisis on people and communities. They are also following closely the measures adopted by national or local governments, negatively affecting access, availability and sustainability of food.  In response, they have also identified some innovative, people-centered, proposals to ensure the right to food and other related human rights in the current situation.

The call to action illustrates some negative, but also innovative examples and encourages coordinated monitoring and response by the network, together with other organizations working to counteract the impact of COVID-19 on the right to food and nutrition and related rights.

You can read the call here.