Trocaire Development Review Launch
Dublin, Nov 12, 2010
The Right to Food
Legal, political and human
implications for a food
security agenda
Dr Su-ming Khoo
School of Political Science and Sociology
NUI Galway
s.khoo@nuigalway.ie
Overview
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Food security as a ‘wicked problem’
FAO and food security
Background: wider project of development and rights
R2F Framework, incl. 2004 FAO Guidelines
Civil society and “adequate food” - India and RTF
RBA and the wicked problem: mobilizing change
The contribution from ‘development’: entitlement,
capability, dignity
Food? Security? Hunger?
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Food security as a ‘wicked problem’
Differing goals cause policy fragmentation
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Freedom from want...adequate std of living (UDHRArt25)
Nutrition and health
Disposal of grain surplus – food aid
1972 food crisis – food security (famine warning)
Increasing production
Controlling trade
Entitlement failure – employment, safety nets
Structural justice vs. Structural adjustment
Hunger and malnutrition repeatedly sidelined,
despite efforts
Right Time for Right to Food
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1996 WFS – Kairos for RTF? (Ziegler)
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Hunger has a unique universal appeal. Nothing
touches the consciousness as much as hunger. It
brings into man’s immediate consciousness the
social injustices and inequalities, the divisions
between man and man that encrust the social
structure everywhere
B.R. Sen, FAO D-G (1957-67)
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1996 Rome Declaration ‘cumbersome and
unclear’ but by 2000 RTF as an instrument to
deal with ‘a totally unacceptable situation’
Jones & Stokke, 2005, Human rights discourse
increasingly frames approaches to development:
Previously, “human rights” and “development”
lay as if two distinct islands in mutually
uncharted waters
Socio-economic issues comprised a
vast channel that put great distance
between human rights and
development
RTF within RTD approach
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3 ‘planks’ bridging development and rights
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Recovering indivisibility
Democratising development
Humanising rights
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RTD approach: a vector of all indivisible
rights (Sengupta) and people-centred
process
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Realization of RTD: 3 immediate action areas
 Food, Education, Health
CESCR Comment 12
Comment 12 The right to adequate food (Art.11)
E/C.12/1999/5. “the most authoritative”
http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/3d02758c707031d5
8025677f003b73b9
 Art 11.1 ICECSCR
"the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living
…including adequate food, clothing and housing,
and to the continuous improvement of living conditions",
 Art.11.2 immediate and urgent steps …to ensure
"the fundamental right to freedom from hunger and
malnutrition".
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Hunger as Rights failure
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India: Ambekar’s Directive Principles – democracy
“a form and method of government whereby
revolutionary changes in the economic and social life
of the people are brought about without bloodshed”
Sen’s entitlement theory: no famine in a democracy
But a ‘nutrition emergency’ - 47% of Indian children
undernourished
gender discrimination
Education is affected
Intergenerational injustice
The Right to Food in India
2001 petition in Rajasthan by C Gonsalves (PUCL)
following food crisis
 Court accepted petition, extended to whole India
 GoI - many schemes already existed
 Landmark Interim Order covered 8 federal schemes
 Focus on School Mid-day Meal Scheme
 New emphasis on politics and governance
 5 recommendations
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FAO 2004 Guidelines
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2004 Guidelines reframe Food Security as context for
RTF
FAO not Party to ICECSR, so indirectly binding, but
play a key role
Recommend national actions: framework law,
coordination, accountability, participation
Also non-state actors – TNCs, NGOs
Pressure by NGOs and civil society a major driver
transforming abstract right
Human development theory
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Sen, Amartya (1999) Development as
Freedom
Removing ‘the major sources of unfreedom’.
Focus on ‘instrumental freedoms’ and public
policy
Capability – valued beings and doings
complexity of what is valued by humans
De Herdt – plurality of concerns (ability to
appear in public without shame)