Right to food activists laud rapporteur’s alert on UN food summit’s lack of human rights lens in addressing hunger
Right to food activists have lauded UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri's findings on the impacts of COVID-19 on the right to food and nutrition (RTFN) and his push to place human rights, including the RTFN as the central theme of the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS).
"(T)he way forward is to double, if not triple the efforts to ensure that the summit not only puts human rights in all aspects of the summit, but also focuses on what is the actual problem," said Fakhri on Tuesday, March 2, 2021, during the special rapporteur's interactive dialog with representatives of national human rights institutions (NHRI) and non-government organizations (NGO) before the Human Rights Council' s (HRC) 46th Regular Session.
In his response to queries by NHRIs and NGOs related to the issues surrounding the UNFSS, Fakhri said that as he had stressed in his report to the HRC, among the “main problems” in addressing the people’s right to food “is corporate power and the concentration of power.”
Members of the Global Network on the Right to Food and Nutrition* (GNRTFN)-Asia Chapter** said the special rapporteur’s identification of corporate power as among the hindrances to right to food is closely linked to their call to “hold transnational corporations and other businesses legally accountable to human rights abuses that hamper peoples’ right to food and nutrition during the pandemic and beyond,” which they stressed in their December 2020 Covid-19 Monitoring Report.
Fakhri also noted during the HRC session that the world had been falling behind on fully realizing the right to food even before the current pandemic, which had laid bare the inequities of the food system and accelerated it. However, there remained no internationally coordinated action responding to the hunger crisis caused by Covid-19, according to the rapporteur.
'No sense to participate in summit sans strong human rights approach'
Meanwhile, FIAN International, a member and secretariat of the GNRTFN, recalled the letter submitted by the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples' Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security in which a large number of small food producers movements and civil society organizations said it would make “no sense” for them to participate in a summit that lacks a “strong human rights approach” and “focus on transforming corporate food systems that realigns them with the human rights of people and nature.”
The signatories also urged member-states to radically reorient the course of the FSS in the summit's decision-making bodies in the mentioned letter, including very clear conditions.
Summit must have human rights, agroecology at its core
During the March 2 HRC session, Fakhri also urged countries engaged in the UNFSS process to “ensure that human rights and agroecology are in every aspect of the summit.”
“I think the least effective way would be to treat human rights in a silo and separated off. And I think that each element of the summit with human rights and agroecology at its core…could lead to a more successful summit,” he said.
FIAN backed Fakhri’s call by enjoining UN member-states “to radically reorient the course” of the UNFSS in the summit’s decision-making bodies by strengthening communal and public actors and institutions that are vital to the functioning of food systems.
Also, Fakhri urged countries "to fulfill their right to food and transform their food system at the same time" through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).
“The UNDROP provides the systemic perspective. And I think that if countries really implement it, if they put this UN declaration into their national laws, it (will) provide governments the power to transform their food systems and fulfill (not just) their right to food but (also) many of their human rights obligations,” he said.
*The GNRTFN is a network of public interest civil society organizations and social movements – peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, landless people, consumers, urban people forced to live in poverty, agricultural and food workers, women, youth, and indigenous peoples – that recognize the need to act jointly for the realization of the right to food and nutrition.
**The members of the Asia Chapter of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition that produced the Covid-19 Monitoring Report are the following: Center for Social Development (Manipur, India); Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO – Nepal): FIAN: Focus on the Global South (Regional/India); Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan (Katarungan, Philippines); KHANI, Bangladesh; Maleya Foundation (Bangladesh); Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC, Pakistan); Right to Food Campaign (India); and Solidaritas Perempuan (Indonesia)
