By Daniela Arcuri.
Daniella is a student on our MPH International Development programme. You can follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Last October the World Food Program (WFP) has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Peace for its efforts in combatting the threat of hunger. The announcement comes in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic as the number of people experiencing food insecurity soars, even in high-income countries such as the US or the UK.
Muniz Joel, Community Power. Available from Unsplash
WFP Director David Beasley emphasises the message channelled through the award: a call for action and a reminder that without food security there is no peace, and without peace there is no food security. The interrelatedness of peace, hunger and development is visible in Yemen: a country, on the brink of famine, facing the most devastating humanitarian crisis. Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Shutter reiterates the observation, originally made by Sen (1982), that famines are not driven by scarcity of food. The world produces enough food for everyone; yet, the poorest are excluded from the political fora where food policies impacting their right to food are formulated. What people are missing – says Raj Patel – is to have a say about the food system, […] a genuine and direct democracy. Policies promoting food security fail to deliver more democracy within the food system, if they do not seek to question its dynamics. The language of rights brings to the fore the unequal power relations upon which food systems are built. The right to food is realised when individuals have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food, or means for its procurement. As a legal concept, the right to food is instrumental to the attainment of the policy concept of food security. Pairing food security with the right to food allows us to help communities feed themselves rather than being fed (Anderson 2013).
Ranjan Prabhat, Street of hopes..., Dadar, Mumbai, India. Available from Unsplash
Advocacy groups play an important role as they assist citizens with their claims through campaigns, petitions and court actions (Gauri and Gloppen 2012). Through lobbying and ‘naming and shaming’, organisations like ActionAid and FIAN International seek to challenge power relations and demand social justice and, while framing food insecurity – and poverty – as violations of human rights, they ground one’s claim to food with an ethical imperative, set forth in the law. Nourish Scotland, alongside the Scottish Food Coalition, advocates for the recognition of the right to food into Scots Law, aware that such recognition must be at the core of a strengthened social protection mechanism within and beyond food systems.
The causes of hunger and food insecurity are systematic and they rest on low pay jobs, rising living costs, and the disruption of social welfare safety nets. In the US the acknowledgment of the right to food has enabled the weaponization of hunger when the Trump administration introduced a draconian policy denying green cards and visa renewals to immigrants who had used federal health programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, and whose children had been enrolled on nutrition assistance programs. While the US has not ratified the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Culture Rights – where the right to food is enshrined – its largest foodbank, Feeding America, spends around three million dollars every year and reaches millions of food insecure individuals. Nevertheless, this is not enough to end hunger and malnutrition of entire communities. Food security, per se, is not concerned with the questions of who is responsible for hunger, and how and why access to food is impeded.
So, why do we need a right to food? Because human rights bring the hunger and development debate to its most appropriate arena: politics.
