New Challenges to the Right to Food

New Challenges to the Right to Food Miguel Ángel Martín López José Luis Vivero Pol Coordinators Cátedra de Estudios sobre Hambre y Pobreza Universidad de Córdoba Diputación de Córdoba

2011

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Contents

INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................

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Chapter 1

Hunger for Justice in Latin America. The justiciability of social rights in hungry democracies. José Luis Vivero Pol..................................................................

1. A billion and counting…..............................................................................................

2. Human rights obligations in times of food crisis...........................................................

3. Pushing the Right to Food in Latin America forward: Governments, legislative assemblies and civil society....................................................................................................

4. The region’s hungry democracies: How many hungry people are acceptable for a democratic government?.......................................................................................................

5. What is justiciability?...................................................................................................

6. Is food a right and hunger a justiciable violation of this right?......................................

7. The Optional Protocol to ICESCR will promote justiciability on an international level…..........................................................................................................................

8. …Although the twofold dimension of the right to food affects its justiciability............

9. What can the hungry demand from their governments?...............................................

10. When is the right to food violated?.............................................................................

11. Different types of violations of the right to food.........................................................

12. Analysis of jurisprudence related to the right to food..................................................

12.1. The examples of India and South Africa.............................................................

12.2. Examples from Latin America............................................................................ a) The Case of «Brisas del Bejuco» in Honduras (2007)..................................... b) The Case of Carmen Janeth Molina, Quezaltenango, Guatemala (2006)....... c) The Case of the Yakye Axa Indigenous Community versus the State of Paraguay (2002)................................................................................................... d) The Case of the Ombudsman versus the State and the Province of Chaco on behalf of Toba Indigenous People, Argentina (2007).....................................

13. Restrictions to justiciability: A law that citizens and judges are unaware of is not applied....................................................................................................................... a) Human rights cannot be legally invoked................................................................. b) Problems accessing the ordinary courts................................................................... c) Diffused responsibility and contested classification................................................. d) The absence of instigators and informed lawyers..................................................... e) Cumbersome bureaucracy and little international outreach....................................

14. Considerations for making progress in the justiciability of this right........................... a) Creating a Law for the National Food and Nutritional Security System.................. b) Raising awareness among civil servants................................................................... c) Training on the right to food.................................................................................. d) Establishing the National ‘Rapporteur’ or ‘Procurador’ for the Right to Food........

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e) Forensic certificates including severe acute malnutrition as a cause of death............ f ) The establishment of a court that specialises in ESCR............................................. g) Civil society awareness............................................................................................ h) A national observatory on food and nutritional security and the right to food........ i) Monitoring indicators............................................................................................. j) The creation of mechanisms that allow for public interest litigation........................

15. Demanding fundament al social rights in fragile democracies.....................................

16. References..................................................................................................................

48 48 49 49 49 50 50 51

Chapter 2

The Governance of Hunger. Innovative proposals to make the right to be free from hunger a reality. Andrew MacMillan and Josﾃｩ Luis Vivero............................

1. Hunger needlessly kills thousands each day..................................................................

2. The Role of Inter-Governmental Institutions in world food governance.......................

3. Setting a Goal: halving hunger is not fair, ending hunger is possible by 2025...............

4. Elements of a Convention on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition.................

5. An International Public Register of Commitments.......................................................

6. A Global Campaign to promote accountability in the eradication of hunger and malnutrition.......................................................................................................................

7. Conclusion: We know we can and must end hunger now.............................................

Annex 1: Preliminary Draft of the Convention for the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition.......................................................................................................................

Annex 2: National Declaration of Commitment to Eradicate Hunger and Malnutrition by 2025........................................................................................................................

57 58 62 68 71 76 78 81 82 94

Chapter 3

The Relationship Between the Right to Food and the Trade of Agricultural Products. Reflections after the Food Crisis. Miguel ﾃ］gel Martﾃｭn

Lﾃｳpez................................................................................................................................

99

1. The poor attention to the right to food during the crisis...............................................

2. The existence of speculation in food markets during the crisis.......................................

3. The debate on food free trade during the crisis..............................................................

4. The lack of rules on the relationship between right to food and the trade of agricultural products.......................................................................................................................

5. Food trade practice during the crisis.............................................................................

6. The need to include the right to food into the negotiation and rules of the world trade organization.................................................................................................................

7. World food business and the right to food....................................................................

8. The role of trade in the reform of the governance of the global food and agricultural system..........................................................................................................................

99 101 102 104 105 107 109 111

Chapter 4

Climate change impacts on agricultural productivity and food security in the global South. Ricardo Isea Silva and Raquel Villodres Toledo....................

113

1. Introduction.................................................................................................................

2. Role of agriculture in climate change............................................................................

113 114

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3. Effects of climate change in agriculture: the damages revert on those who have not caused the problem.......................................................................................................

4. Consequences for food security....................................................................................

5. Final remarks: the need for an urgent global action.......................................................

6. Bibliography.................................................................................................................

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117 120 122 123

Chapter 5

From Green Revolution to Gene Revolution: change of paradigm in the ownership of knowledge. Ricardo Isea Silva...........................................................

1. The Green Revolution era.............................................................................................

1.1. An unsustainable model........................................................................................

1.2. The central role of public sector............................................................................

2. The Gene Revolution model: towards the privatization of agricultural science and technologies........................................................................................................................

2.1. The role of supranational regimes of financing and trade.......................................

2.2. The granting of patents: encouraging agricultural innovation?...............................

2.3. Who benefits from the progress in agricultural knowledge?...................................

3. A final remark...............................................................................................................

4. Bibliography.................................................................................................................

125 125 125 127 128 129 130 130 132 133

Chapter 6

THE SCOPE OF AGROECOLOGICAL PRACTICES: A MULTIFUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO TACKLE HUNGER SUSTAINABLE AND EFFICIENTLY. Raquel Villodres Toledo..............

1. The need of a new paradigm: organic farming..............................................................

1.1. Exhaustion and consequences of Green Revolution...............................................

1.2. A sustainable change: agroecological practices.......................................................

1.3. Organic agriculture concept..................................................................................

1.4. De facto organic farming vs. certified....................................................................

1.5. The way to a holistic sustainable development.......................................................

2. Food security and Health..............................................................................................

2.1. Can organic farming increase food security?..........................................................

2.2. Nutritional benefits of organic agriculture.............................................................

2.3. Improvement on health.........................................................................................

3. Organic farming and Climate Change..........................................................................

3.1. Climate change and agriculture: a bidirectional affectation...................................

3.2. Organic farming to deal with climate change........................................................

3.3. The importance of short supply chains to reduce energy footprint........................

4. Recovering biodiversity and soil fertility.......................................................................

4.1. Biodiversity through Organic Farming..................................................................

4.2. «Feed the soils, not plants»: the importance of moisture and organic matter..........

5. Organic methods for pests and disease management.....................................................

5.1. «Pest is not a problem but a symptom».................................................................

5.2. Preventive Pest Management and Non Pesticidal Management; the way is to enhance biodiversity.................................................................................................

6. Socio-cultural aspects....................................................................................................

6.1. Collective action, collective rights.........................................................................

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6.2. Organic farming as a source of employment..........................................................

6.3. Recognizing women’s work...................................................................................

7. Sustainability and productivity.....................................................................................

7.1. Conventional/chemical agriculture is no-longer sustainable, organic agriculture is...

7.2. Myth dismantlement: productivity in organic farming..........................................

8. The role of Certification...............................................................................................

8.1. Organic Certification: only a label........................................................................

8.2. What is Organic Certification? Its benefits............................................................

8.3. The perversion of Organic Certification................................................................

8.4. Organic farming and Food Sovereignty: global standards, local-based certification.......................................................................................................................

9. Public policies: towards a multifunctional Agriculture..................................................

9.1. Organic management: adding science innovation to traditional knowledge...........

9.2. Public «re-investment»: the crucial role of governments........................................

10. The next step: organic farming for a sustainable development.....................................

11. Bibliography...............................................................................................................

161 162 163 163 164 167 167 167 168 171 172 172 173 175 176

ANNEX 1

The Cordoba Declaration on the right to food and the governance of the global food and agricultural system. .........................................................

181

1. Preamble......................................................................................................................

2. Existing diagnoses and responses..................................................................................

3. Recommendations........................................................................................................

182 183 185

ANNEX 2

Call from the Cordoba Group for Coherence and Action on Food Security and Climate Change. ............................................................................................

189

1. A call for coherence: making the multilateral system work for the hungry....................

1.1. Coherence in Decisions.........................................................................................

1.2. Coherence in Delivery..........................................................................................

1.3. Coherence in Dialogue.........................................................................................

1.4. Coherence in Diplomacy (Rome and Copenhagen)..............................................

2. A new opportunity for food security.............................................................................

190 190 190 190 191 191

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Introduction

The most recent world food crisis has revealed the right to food’s inability to address and prevent such situations. Now is the time to make this right stronger and more effective, moving from voluntary guidelines to binding laws. As we all know, not long ago, the FAO sponsored the creation of voluntary guidelines for the realization of the right to food. Their publishing was widely celebrated, and they were considered the most detailed and comprehensive text designed to make this right a reality for millions of hungry people.

There is no doubt that these guidelines provide an exhaustive framework for action and offer detailed coverage of important issues. However, new realities have emerged in recent years, perhaps too quickly and unexpectedly, that have revealed the need to provide more complete regulation of the right to food than that provided by the guidelines. Ideally, therefore, their text should be amended and updated.

The right to food also requires the development of a more solid and receptive legal system, stressing enforcement of the rights already approved. Although the voluntary guidelines are fairly comprehensive and practical, progress in their realization has been slow and uneven. Greater judicial impetus is therefore required, progressing towards justiciability and the enactment of domestic legislation. In this regard, Latin America is the most advanced region in terms of the legal framework for and civil society awareness of the right to food. An analysis of this area is presented by José Luis Vivero Pol (Chapter 1), who is also a member of CEHAP. He has extensive experience in the issue, formerly as an FAO officer and currently as Action Against Hunger Coordinator for Central America.

The next chapter (Chapter 2) is co-authored by José Luis Vivero and Andrew McMillan, a former FAO field operations director with extensive experience in food security. It addresses another area from which the right to food has been relatively absent, although is now gaining momentum: the global governance of the food system and countries’ commitment to enforcing this right. The authors propose an international treaty to eradicate hunger and an international public register of commitments to end it. Their proposal is welldeveloped and provides a clear path to follow within the corpus of international law, given that a treaty provides the most elaborated and binding legal

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Introduction

framework and is used as a mechanism to back a strong policy response to the serious global problems affecting humankind.

Another important topic affecting the implementation of the right to food is food trade. The aforementioned voluntary guidelines make some references to it, although these are very brief and vague. However, the recent food crisis has shown the considerable influence it wields. This is the focus of Chapter 3, by Miguel Angel Martín López, a member of the Chair on Hunger and Poverty Studies (CEHAP), who looks at the implications of the right to food regulations and their links with the rules and ongoing negotiations covering the trade in agricultural products within the World Trade Organization.

The purpose of this book is to indicate some areas and subjects that will have great impact in coming years on the implementation of the right to food and food security and which are, at present, either not or barely regulated.

These include climate change and biotechnology to improve agricultural production, issues that are currently the focus of great debate and which clearly have a great effect on food security. Climate change is currently a serious threat to food security in many parts of the world, in the form of either severe floods or droughts (Chapter 4). Intellectual property rights may also conflict with access to food, as described in the right to food. The author describes “the privatization of agricultural knowledge” (Chapter 5), which is also having deep implications for international food security.

Given these issues, countries should not remain idle but should lead the way in addressing and regulating these issues for the benefit of their citizens, particularly the most vulnerable amongst them.

Forms of agricultural production are also an issue not properly addressed within the scope of the right to food. This right cannot take a neutral stance on the way food is produced. Consequently, Chapter 6 focuses on the study of sustainable agriculture as a policy alternative in the face of these challenges, in the very same spirit of several United Nations agencies, which have demonstrated the positive impact of agro-ecology on food security.

These three chapters have been written by Ricardo Isea Silva (Chapters 4 and 5) and Raquel Villodres Toledo (Chapters 4 and 6). They are Research Fellows at the Oakland Institute (California, U.S.) with experience in India and West Africa.

The book concludes with an Annex containing two declarations issued by the Chair on Hunger and Poverty Studies (CEHAP) and benefiting from the input of reputed high-level international experts: Olivier de Shutter, in his personal capacity as the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, as well as the conceptual father of this right, Prof. Asbjorn Eide.

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Introduction

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The first is the November 2008 Cordoba Declaration on the Right to Food and the Governance of the Global Food and Agricultural Systems, which reviews the major problems and challenges facing the right to food after the 2008 food crisis. Since its issuing, the Cordoba Declaration has been taken into account in several negotiations and international forums.

The second, issued in October 2009, is the Call from the Cordoba Group for Coherence and Action on Food Security and Climate Change. This addresses a fundamental problem of the moment and calls for a joint treatment of both issues at all levels and the development of production systems that favour small-scale peasant producers, the group that most needs the full implementation of the right to food in the world. These are the new challenges that the right to food has to face in the 21st century.

Miguel ﾃ］gel Martﾃｭn Lﾃｳpez Josﾃｩ Luis Vivero Pol Coordinators

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