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.
Even in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enacted in 1948 this right was included in article 25 ,
which recognizes ”individual´s right to an adequate life standard that would guarantee individuals and their
families good health and well being, and specially food.”
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.
Hunger is probably the cruelest manifestation of humanity´s disrespect given that the resources needed are
already available but there is a lack, once again, of political will to allow people to execute their right
to food
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.
International cooperation has consistently tried to fight hunger, but it has not always been done at the
root level. Throughout last century and this century, the international community has set forth several
initiatives to fight hunger.
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.
After decades of trying to fight hunger through the betterment in the food supply to those starving or
undernourished, the FAO added a complementary approach by addressing what causes the lack of food and
acknowledges that it is not a shortage of food issue but instead the key problem is the access to food
and the means to produce them. Only those countries who have made investments in the rural areas have
improved their fight-against-hunger indicators.
The farmer organizations in the developing countries launch the food sovereignty concept, the rights of
individuals, villages and communities to define their policies and agricultural and food strategies to produce
and distribute sustainable food.
Food sovereignty demands:
- to give priority to the local markets of farmers and families produce;
- to guarantee fair prices to the farmers;
- to guarantee the access to and, water, woods and other productive resources;
- public investment to promote family and community production activities.
The Campaign ”The right to food. Urgent”, sponsored by Action Aid Spain, Cáritas Española,
Engineers without Borders and Prosalus, proposes:
