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Right to food
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Is food a human right? Yes. The right to life is one of the most basic of all human rights. It is clearly set out in international conventions and declarations. So is the right to a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing. Food is a necessary part of this right - since food is essential to keep people alive and in good health.
What does it mean to say food is a right?It means we agree that every human being is entitled to enough of the right food for good health. Ensuring a hungry person has food is not charity. It is not something they should be grateful for. They do not have to do anything to deserve it. And if anyone in the world does not have enough, we are all diminished, or made less, as a result.
Saying that food is a right also means that access to food must never be used to force someone to do something, or withdrawn as a punishment.
Despite these widely recognised rights, very large numbers of people around the world are denied access to the nutritious food they need.
Is half the world starving? No. It is a common phrase. It is wrong, and it is does not help understanding. For one thing, starving creates a mental image of people wasting away to death through lack of food. That is not very common at all. Much more likely is that people become weak and ill through malnutrition, not having enough of the right sort of food. Their ability to fight off infections is reduced. They can become dangerously ill from diseases that would not be very severe for a healthy, well-fed person. This especially affects children, who may fail to grow properly and suffer permanent mental or physical damage if they are denied food in their early years.
United Nations experts estimate that around a billion people are chronically hungry. That is a shockingly high figure, revealing a lot of human suffering. But it is more like 17 per cent – not 50 per cent – of the world's population. Their problems are not mainly the direct risk of starvation, but hunger-related illness, weakness and disability.
What is a better description of hunger?A better statement would be something like the following. "Despite their own efforts, many thousands of millions of people are without reliable access to sufficient food. This happens for complex reasons to do with political and economic forces, global trade policies, land and property ownership, natural events, wars and civil disturbances".
Although it is longwinded it is a better statement because it suggests some of the causes of hunger. It doesn't portray people who are hungry as passive, helpless and without dignity. It indicates that a lot of hunger has to do with global and national political choices – things that can be changed but are not mainly in the control of those worst affected by them. It defines hunger as a matter of human rights, rather than one of welfare and charity.
In their attempts to do something about widespread hunger, aid agencies and politicians often talk about food security – or food insecurity, for those who do not have it.
What is food security?If you have food security, you are able to access enough nutritious food for your needs. You are likely to be able to carry on doing so even if circumstances change.
That is true of the majority of people in the developed world – in so-called wealthy countries. A poor growing season, a crop failure, or an economic downturn will not cut off the supply of food for most people. There is enough variety of foodstuffs, or alternative suppliers, to make up for a shortage. Even if the price of food rises, it is still affordable because most people can cut back on other spending to make sure they get the basics.
Something very dramatic would have to happen to threaten the general national food security of wealthy countries. Examples might be:
- A severe and long-lasting natural disaster that destroyed most or all of the food production and import systems.
- A violent armed conflict, in which different sides forcibly prevented the movement of food, seeds and equipment into certain regions to starve opponents and cause them to leave their homes.
- Spiralling inflation, where money quickly became worth less and less, until basics such as a loaf of bread cost a month's wages.
- An epidemic of illness, that caused very large numbers of deaths and broke down the organisation of families and communities.
- A corrupt government channelling the nation's resources towards its own use, paying huge sums to friends and family, stifling the economy, destroying the welfare state, arresting dissidents and allowing criminal gangs to grab land and property.
None of these are likely to happen in wealthy western countries. That's why so many people there are said to have food security.
Yet those examples accurately describe what has happened and continues to happens in many countries of the world. Examine the situations of some of the hundreds of thousands of people who experience hunger and the causes are quite likely to be one, two, or a combination of several of those reasons.
For many people hunger isn't a temporary state, a response to particular event such as conflict. It is a more or less permanent fact of life, caused in most cases by poverty.
What is the answer to hunger?There is no single response to food insecurity. The approach needed in a war-affected area like Sudan will be different from that in parts of Kenya where, say, the impact of HIV is a major problem. Likewise the mix of severe economic problems and frequent natural disasters in Bangladesh needs a particular solution. That will be different from the solution to the food shortages caused by poverty in the rural highlands of Guatemala.
In all these cases, food insecurity has not happened overnight. And there is no overnight quick answer either. Some people think that the best way to eradicate hunger is to create economic stability, peace, and good government. These do not come automatically with periodic free and fair elections, but also require a trusted police service, a free press, an independent and fair justice system and a well-funded health service. For many countries, that combination is a long way off. Governments need to acknowledge hunger and poverty as major problems and develop policies on agriculture, nutrition, the economy, social support or safety nets and trade.
Is it only in poor countries that people lack the right to food?Developing countries are where the problem is greatest, affecting the largest numbers of people and with the most complex causes. But on a smaller scale, hunger is a feature of many people's lives in wealthy countries too. Looked at from a household level, hunger can occur anywhere there are vulnerable people living in poverty who are excluded from the mainstream.
Consider a homeless person living in an inner-city hostel or a family surviving on an income way below the average. Some days they may manage to have enough to eat. But if something else happens – eviction from their hostel, a larger-than-expected fuel bill – their resources could be stretched beyond limits and food may not be affordable.
Similarly, isolated elderly people living alone may go hungry because no one visits and they cannot always get out. Patients in hospital who cannot physically reach their food may go hungry because the nursing staff haven't time to feed them or are unaware of their problem.
The scale of the problem is clearly smaller than in the developing world. But many people are shocked to realise that in 2008 an estimated 49 million people in the United States, including nearly one in four children, didn't always have enough to eat.
Who is trying to eradicate hunger?A lot of people. And, contrary to the impression given by many aid agencies and media reports, the greatest effort and most long-lasting success comes from those most directly involved. Hungry people work hard, trying all available options and using all the resources they have, to find reliable food sources themselves.
Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes the challenges are too great and the problems not solvable.
The international community has set itself targets – known as the Millennium Development Goals – which include halving the numbers of people experiencing extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. In some areas this is on track, says the United Nations World Food Programme. It says the target should be met in east and south-east Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the European part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and in north Africa. There is still a long way to go in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. And in parts of west Asia and the Asian countries in the CIS, the World Food Programme admits there has either been no progress or even a deterioration.
Areas for exploration with students
There are many possible activities to help students learn about food as a right. It is important to make sure that this is genuine learning, positive and empowering. Avoid making students feel guilty or overprivileged. Feeling bad about basic rights you have doesn't help anyone else get theirs. And remember, there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. Eating healthily yourself doesn't deny anyone else. Here are some ideas:
- Ask students to use internet search engines and news websites to find examples of food shortages caused, at least in part, by each of the following: armed conflict, natural disaster, rural poverty. Create short descriptions of the major problems, and paste them onto a world map. Look at overlaps and talk about reasons..
- In the UK, it is estimated that at least two million people are affected by malnutrition. Invite students to say who they think that group consists of. Who is most at risk? Then show and discuss this list, drawn up by the NHS of those at risk of malnutrition in the UK:
> the elderly, particularly those who are in hospital or institutionalised
> people with low incomes or who are socially isolated
> asylum seekers and refugees trying to survive in a strange country away from the support systems they are used to
Ask students to think through some possible solutions to these problems. How difficult is it for a wealthy country to make sure everyone is adequately fed? Do they think the problem could be solved by food aid or charity donations?Compare their thoughts with their attitudes to the developing world. Are problems there likely to be easier or harder to solve?
- Invite students to devise and create a poster based on the right to food. Talk about dignity. Consider contrasting rights with charity. Use as a trigger the text from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Add other information from other sources, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
To help students select suitable photos, take a look at the charity photos activity.
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| This briefing was written by PJ White in January 2010.
This resource and other free educational materials are available at redcross.org.uk/education. |
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