To Have a Full Belly is a Human Right

The denial of humanitarian access and food emergency aid to the penalised population of the region of Darfur, Sudan during much of this year is but one example for the use of food as a weapon in internal conflicts. It is estimated that some 60 million people worldwide are the victims of such deliberate attempts by warring parties to starve civilian populations. However such figures are dwarfed by the extent of hunger caused by the unjust distribution of resources such as land and water. “The United Nations estimate that 840 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition but enough food is produced to feed the world’s population,” says Rolf Künnemann, Secretary General of the international human rights organisation FIAN. “People are usually deprived of food for man-made reasons, but violent conflicts such as the one ravaging Darfur are only one side of the story. In many more cases, hunger the consequence of long-term systematic violations of the right to food.”

Such systematic violations follow a similar pattern: They usually take place in the Southern half of the globe and benefit local elites, Northern consumers and companies. Peasant communities and slum dwellers and other poor sections of the population of countries such as Brazil, India or Nigeria are illegally deprived of their resources in land and water. Entire communities are driven off their lands by powerful land-owners who then use it for cattle-ranching or coffee production destined for Northern consumers. Crop failures are caused by multinational mining companies that contaminate fields and rivers. Market deregulation and the dismantling of social security programmes due to pressure from international finance institutions drives people into lives of hunger in the city streets. The victims are usually the least powerful in society: peasants, the urban poor, women, children or oppressed ethnic groups.

In the face of such odds, peasant communities and other victims of violations have for a long time been organising themselves in the struggle for a better livelihood without hunger and a just share of agricultural land. The case of the Maria de Lourdes coffee farm in Génova, Guatemala stands out as an example of how hunger can be defeated through local mobilisation and international support. Twelve years ago the men and women workers of the farm were illegally dismissed by the owner, a family member of the present President Oscar Berger. The workers who had been thrown into a decade-long life of hunger and poverty protested, took their case to court, appealed to the authorities and asked for the support of international civil society organisations such as FIAN, which launched a series of protest letter campaigns. Intense pressure forced the President’s family to the negotiation table. An agreement was struck in September 2004, which included that the workers be given land to grow their own food on. One of the workers’ representatives summarises, “during the long years of misery, we were driven by the dream of owning our own land and being left in peace, to plant our own food and no more suffer from hunger.”