Transforming the Global Economy to Achieve the Right to Food for All
The latest edition of the Right to Food and Nutrition WATCH explores the connection between financial reform and the human right to adequate food and nutrition. It examines the impact of key aspects of financial governance – including foreign debt, austerity, development cooperation and tax evasion – onthe right to food.
Transforming the Global Economy to Achieve the Right to Food for All is published by the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition two weeks ahead of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) to be held in Seville, Spain from June 30 to July 3, 2025.
The UN Financing for Development (FfD) process is a multilateral space to advance systemic changes in international financial architecture. It is the only democratic space in which global economic governance is addressed, considering its interconnection with the structural causes of the current multiple crises the world faces, including climate change and inequalities. The conference also contributes to the coherence of international governance as human rights remain at its core.
It has historical roots in Global South discontent with the inequalities inherent in international financial architecture. Countries of the global south demand significant structural changes to secure the fiscal space needed to fulfill their human rights obligations. This upcoming conference will also focus on implementing the SDGs and how to align finance with environmental and socioeconomic priorities.
“This edition of the WATCH presents sharp, grounded analyses by frontline experts and movements demonstrating how the global financial architecture contributes to hunger and malnutrition. It also presents concrete, transformative alternatives demanded by civil society,” says FIAN International Secretary General Ana María Suárez Franco.
“We are calling for a complete overhaul of global financial governance. Tinkering at the edges through more private investment will not end hunger and malnutrition. It will not restore dignity or heal the planet amidst the multiple crises generated by the system we are fighting to transform.”
In the framing article, Transforming the Global Economy to Achieve the Right to Food for All: Democratizing Global Economic Governance, Flora Sonkin and Stefano Prato show why global economic solutions are essential for realizing the right to food. The authors argue that the UN’s Financing for Development process serves as a platform to promote the necessary systemic changes. They acknowledge that power imbalances and political-economic dynamics influence the UN systems. Nevertheless, they stress that it can be a space to develop new normative frameworks for transforming global economic, monetary, and financial governance.
In Public Debt and the Right to Food: A Gender Issue Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky delves into the impacts of foreign debt on women´s rights. He proposes to reform the institutions and rules governing public debt to effectively address the urgent food challenges facing the world, including the gender inequities they create.
The third article, Time for Progressive, Just, Inclusive and Participatory Tax Systems to Realize the Right to Food, by Nathalie Beghin, explains that taxing the superrich and combating tax evasion are key to mobilizing resources to realize the right to adequate food and nutrition. She emphasizes the need for countries to adopt effective progressive tax systems and collaborate internationally to combat resource drain caused by tax evasion, inefficient incentives, and low taxation of wealthy individuals and corporations.
In the interview, Taxes and Charges on Fisheries Should Support Fisherfolks’ Right to Food, Giovanni Occhiali explains the difference between taxes and charges in the fishing sector. He emphasizes that evading these taxes and charges has detrimental implications for sustainability and the livelihoods of artisanal fisherfolk, as fish consumption is a vital part of their diet.
In the fifth piece, Food and Nutrition: A Lower Priority in Indian Government Budgets, Raj Shekhar Singh and Dipa Sinha examine how the declining budgetary focus on social programs adversely impacts children and women in India.
In the last article, Development Finance in Zambia: Privatizing Seed, Growing Debt, and Increasing Hunger, Frances Davies presents a powerful example of the way misguided finance for development can facilitate the corporate capture of the national public seed system. The author concludes with a strong call for a transition towards agroecology.
