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As in the previous edition, this issue seeks to complement SOFI using an alternative approach based on progress regarding the right to food and food sovereignty to monitor hunger and malnutrition.

“The aim is to look beyond the numbers presented by SOFI, by portraying insights from struggles on the ground across regions, a perspective too often left out from discussions on food insecurity”, explains Daniel Fyfe, monitoring coordinator of FIAN International, Secretariat of the GNRtFN. “Communities, social movements and civil society organizations working daily on the ground are the “real experts” whose voices should be heard when monitoring the right to food and nutriton”, Fyfe continues. 

This year’s report also presents how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed decades of failed policies that cut people's social and labour rights, leaving them at the mercy of food banks and other charities. Together with FIAN International’s COVID-19 Monitoring Reports, this issue highlights how the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition predate the COVID-19 pandemic, which will, according to SOFI, severely increase the number of hungry people, making the Zero Hunger by 2030 target of Sustainable Development Goal 2 even more difficult to attain. 

Some of the developments on the right to food and nutrition highlighted in the report include:

• The outbreak of the COVID-19 disease has highlighted the intrinsic link between the predominant industrial food system, climate change, and eco-destruction. The right to food and nutrition offers a place of convergence for the agrarian and climate justice movements, and serves as a powerful tool to address the climate crisis.
• Across regions, communities and local governments are already actively transforming food systems, such as in Gaza where urban and peri-urban agriculture practices have become strategies for achieving food sovereignty in a context of protracted crisis; or in Spain’s Balearic Islands, where the local government has used its procurement policy to buy fresh food products from small-scale local food producers for food aid as well as for public school meals.
• Authoritarianism and attacks on human rights persist across regions, for instance in India, the Philippines and Malawi. Killings of human rights defenders continue to be rampant in Colombia, Mexico, Honduras and Brazil.
• On the other hand, the right to food and nutrition has been strengthened through progressive legal developments at national level, for instance in Paraguay, Honduras and Togo. At regional level, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights adopted a resolution on the right to food and nutrition, while the Inter-American Court of Human Rights rendered a landmark decision recognizing for the first time a violation of the right to food.
• Human rights accountability at the international level continues to be weakened: The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) suffered severe budgetary constraints, and civil society across the globe harshly criticized the signing of a strategic partnership agreement between the UN and the World Economic Forum as corporate capture of the UN.

“The State of the Right to Food and Nutrition Report confirms the pressing need to protect human rights “, Daniel Fyfe points out. “In light of the current multiple crises, communities worldwide have already started organizing for the transformation of food systems which implies claiming the rights of small-scale food producers who produce most of the food we consume. More than ever, States need to urgently implement key instruments on the realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition adopted by the UN Committee on World food Security, as well as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas“, Fyfe concludes.

Download the State of the Right to Food and Nutrition report

Download the Executive Summary

Notes to Editors

The report covers the period between July 2019 and July 2020. It does not claim to be exhaustive, but rather covers countries, regions, and cases where the GNRtFN members are active. 

The upcoming 2020 issue of the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch entitled “Overcoming Ecological Crises: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Human Rights” explores in depth the intrinsic link between the industrial food system and climate and eco destruction.

The impact of COVID-19 on the right to food and nutrition has been presented in two monitoring reports by FIAN International.

In its 65th Ordinary Session held in Banjul, Gambia, the African Commission on Human and Peoples (ACHPR) adopted the Resolution on the Right to Food and Nutrition (RtFN) in Africa.  Among its highlights, the resolution recognizes the importance of national RtFN legal frameworks, as well as the full participation of small-scale food producers, farmers, livestock farmers and fisherfolks in the design and monitoring of the realization of the RtFN. Furthermore, the adopted resolution calls on States Parties to foster local and organic food production and consumption by banning GMOs, and regulating the promotion and marketing of industrialized and highly processed foods. In addition, the resolution highlights the important role of women in maintaining and improving rural  livelihoods  and urges the promotion  and  strengthening of  multi-sector and gender inclusive  platforms  at  the  national  level.

“The resolution is key for carrying out advocacy work to advance the RtFN at national and regional level. It serves to recognize and legally protect peasant seeds, which are important to ensure biodiversity and diversified healthy food and nutrients. Equally, the resolution is an important tool to promote the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) General Recommendation 34 on the Rights of Rural Women and the UN Declaration on Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), as both human rights instruments have provisions that are in line with this resolution”, commented Valentin Hategekimana, Africa Coordinator at FIAN International

FIAN International highly welcomes the resolution and encourages the ACHPR to step up its efforts to advance the RtFN in Africa.

For more information, please contact: hategekimana(at)fian.org
 

Following a Coup d’état in Bolivia on November 10, civil society organizations from different parts of the world requested Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to direct immediate attention and action to halt ongoing human rights violations in the country. 

At least 17 people have killed in demonstrations so far. As U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights recently warned, repression and disproportionate use of force by the national army and police risk worsening the human rights situation in Bolivia.

FIAN International cannot but express condemnation for the breach of the constitutional and democratic order, as well as for all acts of hatred and violence committed against indigenous and peasant peoples, as well as human rights defenders during this time. Given the national and regional human rights implications of a Coup, action to protect the human rights of all Bolivians is urgently needed.

Together with other organizations, FIAN International urges the UN to strongly condemn the human rights violations committed in the Plurinational State of Bolivia as a result of the Coup d’état. The UN must take all the necessary measures to ensure an adequate investigation is put in place to identify human rights violations and to safeguard human rights, peace and democracy in the country. 

Read the letter to Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
For media enquiries please contact delrey@fian.org 

Today the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will open for its 46th session, and celebrating 10 years since the 2009 reform. This reform is an important moment that heralded a new era of food governance, led by the people most affected by hunger and malnutrition.  However, 10 years later, as global food insecurity increases, it forces us to rethink our strategies and the role of the CFS in the global food governance picture. Nevertheless, as human rights are increasingly challenged at all levels, it is clear that now more than ever the CFS must be defended.

We are far away from reaching the ambitious targets set in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end hunger by 2030—and even more so we are missing a real, honest discussion on this failure. If we do not identify the structural issues behind the human rights violations that contribute to food insecurity such as poverty and lack of living wage, discrimination, racism, eco-destruction and natural resources grabbing, as well as the problems resulting from the increasing role that corporate interests have in the public policy space, then we cannot identify real solutions.

A radical transformation of food systems is needed.  To transition towards making them sustainable, healthy and just, in line with the right to food and nutrition. Instead, corporations are offering “solutions” that do not address structural injustices, but rather maintain and increase their control over food systems. The discussions ongoing now in the CFS represent an opportunity to find policy solutions to critical issues that have deep impacts on the realization of the right to food and nutrition for many people and communities globally.

The CFS is developing Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition, which is a unique opportunity to fully embrace the solutions put forward by those persons who are on the front line in the struggle for the right to food and nutrition. This includes, as a priority, agroecology.

Agroecology, as practiced and put forward by small-scale food producers, can and will work to protect communities and the climate, while targeting the structural issues that perpetuate rising rates of food insecurity. However, these solutions cannot continue fall on deaf ears or be perceived as a threat to corporate interests, which have been increasingly taken as priority in many spaces across the UN.

Many States, UN agencies, and others blindly support multi-‘stakeholder’ initiatives– which falsely place civil society and public interest on the same footing of the interests of corporate actors– and other forms of collaboration with the corporate sector as a necessary means for addressing food insecurity and malnutrition. However, these initiatives, in fact, further increase and legitimize corporate influence in public policy making. This scenario undermines the human rights orientation of public policies and state accountability, and moves us ever further away from achieving the structural changes required for eliminating hunger. In fact, the HLPE report of the CFS on Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships indicates that the empirical evidence on positive impacts of these partnerships towards eradicating hunger is scarce.

This trajectory which enables greater corporate capture is not the way out of the “crisis” of food insecurity, democracy, and human rights that the world is facing. We need to have a serious discussion on real solutions, with participation of rights holders and those most affected by food insecurity. The CFS is the only space at international level to do this. 
It is possible to build policies informed by the perspectives and experiences of those most marginalized groups and communities. The CFS has had a critical role in supporting and progressing the normative framework that supports the right to food and of small-scale food producers, which can be seen clearly in, for example, the Tenure Guidelines, Framework for Action for Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises, and Connecting Smallholders to Markets.

However, implementation is poor. FAO’s commitment to spearhead implementation support of CFS policies is waning, as is their commitment to right to food. While at the same time this critical policy discourse is completely ignored by the ongoing discussions on the 2030 Agenda, which is concentrating resources and attention on policies, which fail to address human rights.

Monitoring and accountability remains critical to maintaining the legitimacy of the CFS and the decisions that it takes. We are progressively taking steps to further this process, but it remains fundamental to ensure that the policies emerging from this space are taken up by states, and that the CFS continues to create the space to have a critical dialogue on their use and implementation. However, it is also up to us, as civil society, to take full responsibility and ownership over the outcomes that emerge from the CFS. We do not have to wait for permission to advocate for the implementation of policies that ensure our human rights.

FIAN International will participate in the discussions and negotiations at the CFS and will report via @FIANista on Twitter.

For further information, please contact mattheisen[at]fian.org 
For media enquiries, please contact diaz[at]fian.org