BARRETT P. BRENTON, PH.D. PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, ST. JOHN S UNIVERSITY AND Policy Reports To support the Holy See in its work at the United Nations, th e Caritas in Veritate Foundatio n, in Geneva, Switzerland and th e Center for Catholic Studie s a t the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, collaborated in p reparing policy reports on current issues discussed at the United Nations system. The Terrence J. Murphy Institut e for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Polic y, which is a joint venture between the Center of Catholic Studies and the School of Law at the University of St. Thomas, supports this collaboration financially, helps to identify appropriate experts to draft these reports and, with the author s permission, make s them available on its website as a resource for others. Caritas in Veritate Foundatio n ELLEN MESSER, PH.D. Visiting Associate Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, Tufts University TALKING POINTS ON SECURING THE HUMAN RIGHT TO FOOD WITHIN AND ACROSS BORDERS A/HRC/22/50 Universal Solidarity as the essential theme of the Human Right to Food (HRF) The UN Human Rights system establishes an international, inter-state legal framework and moral reference point for promoting peace, prosperity, justice, and human dignity across the world. Within this system, HRF asserts that every individual, without discrimination, has a claim on nutritionally adequate food, because they are human beings. This right entails obligations for governments, to respect, protect, facilitate, and fulfill HRF, and also supporting roles for households, communities, non-governmental and faithbased organizations at multiple social scales. Evaluation of HRF relies on human rights norms of non-discrimination, and substantive achievements to ensure adequate food and freedom from hunger. Social, including faith-based, groups can help monitor these substantive achievements, by helping official or non-governmental monitors establish structural (framework law and food policy), process (implementation of policy, including resource allocations), and outcome (hunger situations and numbers) indicators. Faith-based community-level groups are ideally situated to report on these outcomes. To promote these universal human rights requires social solidarity among all peoples, who are collectively responsible for HRF. Social solidarity at the regional, national, and sub-national levels requires policies that will respect, protect, and fulfill the right to food of all human beings across borders, and without exclusions based on political, geographic, ethnic, or religious (PGER) identity or situation.
Page 2 Prepared by Barrett Brenton and Ellen Messer, August 2013 A country has obligations within and beyond its borders for HRF. These obligations include ones related to adequate food provisioning for all within its borders. Satisfying these obligations requires HRF oversight related to allocation of land for food and agricultural trade. 1 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requires its State parties to attend to measures necessary for an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need (art. 11 (2) (b)). 2 With respect to cross-border policies and practices, this approach emphasizes: o Equitable distribution of resources. Trade should promote an equitable distribution of resources, and not unfairly disadvantage small, local food producers. This entails obligations for governments, for NGOs, for CBOs, for the private sector, including transnational corporations, to respect, protect, and fulfill a commitment to equity. A State is primarily responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling the right to food of people within its borders. However, in a globalized world, structural causes of food insecurity have international dimensions beyond the control of one State. 3 The activities of private businesses have a substantial impact on people s enjoyment of the right to food. Most food is produced, processed, distributed and traded across borders by private entities. This means that the private sector has an important role in ensuring and improving food security. if large businesses enjoy a disproportionate advantage in the competition over land, resources or market access, this may marginalize small-scale food producers and vendors, and as a result undermine their food security.4 o Humanitarian access. Assistance should respect, protect, and fulfill rights of access to food and resources by affected populations within and across borders without discrimination. The right to food is also a responsibility and right to protect. It must advocate for policies and practices that protect people crossing borders and refugees, who may find themselves stateless and without rights protections. In areas where limitations are placed on the flow of food and resources across borders due to political, economic, social, cultural and/or geographic restrictions, such as Somalia, Darfur, and Afghanistan, innovative approaches to addressing Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) must be implemented. 5... UN agencies and NGOs have been applying different approaches to engage with the people they seek to assist in line with their commitments on accountability. Remote
Page 3 management and technology based solutions are becoming increasingly common approaches through which better accountability to communities affected by disaster and conflict can be achieved. 6 o Development assistance, especially as regards agriculture. Assistance should respect, protect, and fulfill rights to produce and market food within and across borders, without discrimination. Assuring food security for all within and between borders will entail developing and marshalling technical expertise and innovation. However, ensuring adequate food and nutrition for all is not merely a problem of technology. Indeed, the problem of hunger in the world results as much from a lack of solidarity as it does from a lack of agricultural capacity. Future progress must clearly be made in areas of agricultural production and productivity to meet growing population demands, but eliminating the scourge of hunger requires equally strenuous efforts to build up a sense of solidarity among all people across borders. As Pope Benedict XVI affirmed, Experience shows that even advanced technical solutions lack efficiency if they do not put the person first and foremost, who comes first and who, in his or her spiritual and physical dimensions is the alpha and the omega of all activity. 7 Solutions must be developed that take full account of the social, political and economic dimensions of their impact on human well-being, especially among the most vulnerable. Therefore, new agricultural technologies and innovations must be reviewed to ensure that they are not only safe, effective and environmentally sustainable but must also minimize any deleterious impact on the livelihoods of all stakeholders. o Special obligations to assist those who are disadvantaged. Households with low incomes and/or low assets, women, children, or members of marginalized groups should be particularly targeted for assistance. This also includes advocating for policies and practice that protect excluded PGER groups within and across state borders. In the most severely impaired communities households emphasis on market-based-solutions and restoration of livelihoods might be the most effective approach. o Respect for HRF requires official policies of non-alienation of customary smallfarmer land-holdings (before equitable distribution of resources). Access to
Page 4 arable land, water, agricultural inputs and credit are major obstacles for smallscale farmers. This situation may be exacerbated in countries that are selling or renting large tracts of arable lands to foreign entities who do not meet a reasonable precondition that their activities contribute to poverty reduction and increasing food security in neighboring communities within and across borders. Efforts to ensure food security across borders should simultaneously enhance the role of small-scale farmers. Changes in the agricultural sector have often had the result of marginalizing and disempowering farmers in favor of those who control credit, distribution networks, and technology. 8 Food security policy should conform to past UN resolutions (e.g., Items 16 and 17 of UN Resolution 65/178) which call for expanded public investment in small-scale farming and for the empowerment and participation of rural women in enhancing agriculture and rural development. Subsidiarity as a guiding principle for food security and the Human Right to Food (HRF) It is the longstanding position of UN Holy See Mission that the principle of subsidiarity should guide policies designed to assure food security. This principle holds that whenever possible local peoples should be empowered to protect the common good and human rights in ways that they themselves devise. This requires local participation in monitoring and decision-making. This is of great importance when considering HRF within and across borders. These strategies maintain the view that food security is a national responsibility and ultimately one of national security. Supporting such empowerment requires assistance when needed for capacity building of agricultural production and food distribution infrastructures that encompass the entire food chain. Strategies must be targeted in a way that considers the following dimensions: o Establishing a national food-security plan. Each country has an obligation to develop a plan that will progressively realize every inhabitant s basic human right to adequate food, including mechanisms to monitor and evaluate its adequacy. Food security and the right to food entail sufficient food availability, economic access, and nutritional adequacy of food choices, in an environment that also requires basic health services, clean water and environmental hygiene for optimal nutrient utilization.
Page 5 o Food security and the right to food begin at the household level. All household members should have available, accessible and adequate food in order to nourish themselves through self-provisioning. This includes food production, livelihoods, marketplace-based exchange, and mechanisms for food sharing across households. Where households are unable to provision themselves, community organizations, including faith-based agencies, can help fill food gaps, and also advocate for greater government oversight and nutritional assistance. o The central tenet of sustainability. Meeting our current needs must not compromise the requirements of future generations. This approach must be especially nimble in its ability to respond to the impact of climate change. Sustainable agricultural practices and strategies for food security must therefore be sensitive to resource use that is linked to care for the environment. Human Dignity and Preferential Options for the Vulnerable at the center of economic development and food security policies In order to meet an approach to HRF that incorporates principles of solidarity and subsidiary at its core, and is both sustainable and inclusive, particular attention must be given by governments to their duty to respect and protect human dignity and a preferential option for the vulnerable within and across borders. Governments must: o Respect (not to deprive) people's customary access to land, clean water, and livelihoods o Protect (protect from deprivation) people's access to affordable food, clean water and environment, and health care. o Protect workers rights to freedom of association, just wages and safe working environment o Protect rights of small farmers to just compensation over and against forced land evictions and unjust manipulations of their assets and livelihoods. o Protect minorities, non-citizens, and females against violence, discrimination, and socioeconomic exclusion from participation in economic development and emergency assistance
Page 6 All human beings and social institutions, with respect to preceding themes, have intergenerational obligations for stewardship and respect for creation and God s world. HRF, food security and agricultural development in particular should advance principles of sustainable food for future generations, including efforts to offset environmental (climate, global) change. We must also be mindful of the impact that changing world consumption patterns have on food security. o Consumerism has led us to become used to an excess and daily waste of food, to which, at times, we are no longer able to give a just value, which goes well beyond mere economic parameters. We should all remember, however, that throwing food away is like stealing from the tables of the poor, the hungry! I encourage everyone to reflect on the problem of thrown away and wasted food to identify ways and means that, by seriously addressing this issue, are a vehicle of solidarity and sharing with the needy. 9 1 UNHC HR (2010) The Right to Adequate Food, Fact Sheet No. 34. Office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights: Geneva. 2 Ibid, p.5. 3 Ibid, p.22. 4 Ibid, p.25. 5 FAO (2012) Accountability to Affected Populations in Limited to No-Access Zones. United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization: Rome. 6 Ibid, p.1. 7 Message of His Holiness Benedict XVI to Mr. Jacques Diouf, Director General of FAO on the Occasion of UN World Food Day 2009.
Page 7 8 Statement by H.E. Archbishop Celestino Migliore at the 64 th Session of the UN General Assembly before the Second Committee on item 60: Agricultural Development and Food Security. 9 Message of His Holiness Francis on the Occasion of UN World Environment Day 2013.