The Right to food is the right to have access to sufficient quality food at
an adequate amount, both at the individual or collective level, on a regular
and permanent basis, as well as the means to produce it in accordance to
each population cultural traditions that would guarantee people´s sound
physical and psychical health.
In accordance to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO),
there were 1.020 million people suffering from hunger and approximately
another 2.000 million suffer what is known as “hidden hunger” (malnutrition)
which means extreme lack of micronutrients that severely hinders their growth
capacity as well as their basic physiological functions.
75% of the people who suffer from hunger are male and female rural workers,
small scale farmers, farmers without land, indigenous communities, shepherds
or fishermen who have no access to the required resources to produce the food
they need to live in good health and dignity. Nevertheless, the availability
of food per person has increased 20% since 1960. Therefore, this is not a lack
of food issue. The basic reasons for hunger in the 21st century are the exclusion
and neglect undergone by millions of people due to structural reasons while the
fundamental solutions come from political endeavors to change the social and
economic structures.
In addition to the acknowledgement of the right to adequate
food as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and in the International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, in year 1996 World Summit Meeting on Food, the Rome Declaration
was approved on World Food Security, where the participants agreed on
reducing by half the number of undernourished people before the year 2015.
This agreement was renewed five years afterwards in the World Food Summit,
organized by the FAO in Rome on June 10th through the 13th 2002 Development
Objectives of the Millennium. The FAO Council approved the “The Voluntary
Guidelines to the progressive realization of the right to adequate food
in the context of national food security” in 2004.
In December of 2008 the text on the Enforcing Protocol on the Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights was approved that would allow, once it comes
into effect, the reporting of violations of these types of rights and,
therefore, the right to food.
The Spanish campaign “Right to food. Urgent”, sponsored by Acción
contra el Hambre, Ayuda en Acción, Cáritas Española, Ongawa and Prosalus,
proposes:
