RES/7/14 The right to food

Human Rights Council

Resolution 7/14. The right to food

The Human Rights Council,

Recalling all previous resolutions on the issue of the right to food, in particular

General Assembly resolution 62/164 of 18 December 2007 and Council resolution 6/2

of 27 September 2007, as well as all resolutions of the Commission on Human Rights

in this regard,

Recalling also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides

that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for her or his health and

well-being, including food, the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger

and Malnutrition and the United Nations Millennium Declaration,

Recalling further the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic,

Social and Cultural Rights, in which the fundamental right of every person to be free

from hunger is recognized,

Bearing in mind the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World

Food Summit Plan of Action and the Declaration of the World Food Summit: five

years later, adopted in Rome on 13 June 2002,

Reaffirming the concrete recommendations contained in the Voluntary

Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in

the Context of National Food Security, adopted by the Council of the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in November 2004,

Bearing in mind paragraph 6 of its resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006,

Reaffirming that all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and

interrelated, and that they must be treated globally, in a fair and equal manner, on the

same footing and with the same emphasis,

Reaffirming also that a peaceful, stable and enabling political, social and

economic environment, at both the national and the international levels, is the

essential foundation that will enable States to give adequate priority to food security

and poverty eradication,

Reiterating, as in the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the

Declaration of the World Food Summit: five years later, that food should not be used

as an instrument of political or economic pressure, and reaffirming in this regard the

importance of international cooperation and solidarity, as well as the necessity of

refraining from unilateral measures that are not in accordance with international law

and the Charter of the United Nations and that endanger food security,

Convinced that each State must adopt a strategy consistent with its resources

and capacities to achieve its individual goals in implementing the recommendations

contained in the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food

Summit Plan of Action and, at the same time, cooperate regionally and internationally

in order to organize collective solutions to global issues of food security in a world of

increasingly interlinked institutions, societies and economies where coordinated

efforts and shared responsibilities are essential,

Recognizing that the problems of hunger and food insecurity have global

dimensions and that there has been virtually no progress made on reducing hunger and

that it could increase dramatically in some regions unless urgent, determined and

concerted action is taken, given the anticipated increase in the world’s population and

the stress on natural resources,

Noting that environmental degradation, desertification and global climate

change are exacerbating destitution and desperation, causing a negative impact on the

realization of the right to food, in particular in developing countries,

Expressing its deep concern at the number and scale of natural disasters,

diseases and pests and their increasing impact in recent years, which have resulted in

massive loss of life and livelihood and threatened agricultural production and food

security, in particular in developing countries,

Stressing the importance of reversing the continuing decline of official

development assistance devoted to agriculture, both in real terms and as a share of

total official development assistance,

Welcoming the theme “The right to food”, chosen by the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations to mark World Food Day on 16 October 2007,

Taking note of the Final Declaration adopted at the International Conference

on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development of the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, on 10 March 2006,

1. Reaffirms that hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human

dignity and therefore requires the adoption of urgent measures at the national, regional

and international levels for its elimination;

2. Also reaffirms the right of everyone to have access to safe and

nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of

everyone to be free from hunger, so as to be able to fully develop and maintain his or

her physical and mental capacities;

3. Considers it intolerable that more than 6 million children still die every

year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday and that there are about 854

million undernourished people in the world and that, while the prevalence of hunger

has diminished, the absolute number of undernourished people has been increasing in

recent years when, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations, the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, twice the

world’s present population;

4. Expresses its concern that women and girls are disproportionately

affected by hunger, food insecurity and poverty, in part as a result of gender

inequality and discrimination, that in many countries, girls are twice as likely as boys

to die from malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, and that it is estimated

that almost twice as many women as men suffer from malnutrition;

5. Encourages all States to take action to address gender inequality and

discrimination against women, in particular where it contributes to the malnutrition of

women and girls, including measures to ensure the full and equal realization of the

right to food and ensuring that women have equal access to resources, including

income, land and water, to enable them to feed themselves and their families;

6. Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to continue

mainstreaming a gender perspective in the fulfilment of his mandate, and encourages

the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and all other United

Nations bodies and mechanisms addressing the right to food and food insecurity to

integrate a gender perspective into their relevant policies, programmes and activities;

7. Reaffirms the need to ensure that programmes delivering safe and

nutritious food are inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities;

8. Encourages all States to take steps with a view to achieving

progressively the full realization of the right to food, including steps to promote the

conditions for everyone to be free from hunger and, as soon as possible, to enjoy fully

the right to food, and to create and adopt national plans to combat hunger, and

recognizes in this regard the great efforts and positive developments with respect to

the right to food in some developing countries and regions, including those

highlighted in the report of the Special Rapporteur (See A/62/289);

9. Stresses that improving access to productive resources and public

investment in rural development is essential for eradicating hunger and poverty, in

particular in developing countries, including through the promotion of investments in

appropriate, small-scale irrigation and water management technologies in order to

reduce vulnerability to droughts;

10. Recognizes that 80 per cent of hungry people live in rural areas, and 50

per cent are small-scale farm-holders, and that these people are especially vulnerable

to food insecurity, given the increasing cost of inputs, and the fall in farm incomes;

that access to land, water, seeds and other natural resources is an increasing challenge

for poor producers; and that support by States for small farmers, fishing communities

and local enterprises is an element key to food security and provision of the right to

food;

11. Stresses the importance of fighting hunger in rural areas, including

through national efforts supported by international partnerships to stop desertification

and land degradation and through investments and public policies that are specifically

appropriate to the risk of drylands, and, in this regard, calls for the full

implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those

Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa;

12. Also stresses its commitments to promote and protect, without

discrimination, the economic, social and cultural rights of indigenous peoples, in

accordance with international human rights obligations and taking into account, as

appropriate, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and

acknowledges that many indigenous organizations and representatives of indigenous

communities have expressed in different forums their deep concerns over the

obstacles and challenges they face for the full enjoyment of the right to food, and calls

upon States to take special actions to combat the root causes of the disproportionately

high level of hunger and malnutrition among indigenous peoples and the continuous

discrimination against them;

13. Requests all States and private actors, as well as international

organizations within their respective mandates, to take fully into account the need to

promote the effective realization of the right to food for all, including in the ongoing

negotiations in different fields;

14. Recognizes the need to strengthen national commitment as well as

international assistance, upon request and in cooperation with affected countries,

towards a better realization and protection of the right to food, and in particular to

develop national protection mechanisms for people forced to leave their homes and

land because of hunger or natural or man-made disasters affecting the enjoyment of

the right to food;

15. Stresses the need to make efforts to mobilize and optimize the

allocation and utilization of technical and financial resources from all sources,

including external debt relief for developing countries, and to reinforce national

actions to implement sustainable food security policies;

16. Recognizes the need for a successful conclusion of the Doha

Development Round negotiations of the World Trade Organization as a contribution

to creating international conditions that permit the realization of the right to food;

17. Stresses that all States should make every effort to ensure that their

international policies of a political and economic nature, including international trade

agreements, do not have a negative impact on the right to food in other countries;

18. Recalls the importance of the New York Declaration on Action against

Hunger and Poverty, and recommends the continuation of efforts aimed at identifying

additional sources of financing for the fight against hunger and poverty;

19. Recognizes that the promises made at the World Food Summit in 1996

to halve the number of persons who are undernourished are not being fulfilled, and

invites once again all international financial and development institutions, as well as

the relevant United Nations agencies and funds, to give priority to and provide the

necessary funding to realize the aim of halving by 2015 the proportion of people who

suffer from hunger, as well as the right to food as set out in the Rome Declaration on

World Food Security and the United Nations Millennium Declaration;

20. Reaffirms that integrating food and nutritional support, with the goal

that all people at all times will have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to

meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life, is part of

a comprehensive response to the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other

communicable diseases;

21. Urges States to give adequate priority in their development strategies

and expenditures to the realization of the right to food;

22. Stresses the importance of international development cooperation and

assistance, in particular in activities related to disaster risk reduction and in

emergency situations such as natural and man-made disasters, diseases and pests, for

the realization of the right to food and the achievement of sustainable food security,

while recognizing that each country has the primary responsibility for ensuring the

implementation of national programmes and strategies in this regard;

23. Calls upon Member States, the United Nations system and other

relevant stakeholders to support national efforts aimed at responding rapidly to the

food crises currently occurring across Africa and expresses its deep concern that

funding shortfalls are forcing the World Food Programme to cut operations across

different regions, including Southern Africa;

24. Invites all relevant international organizations, including the World

Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to promote policies and projects that have

a positive impact on the right to food, to ensure that partners respect the right to food

in the implementation of common projects, to support strategies of Member States

aimed at the fulfilment of the right to food and to avoid any actions that could have a

negative impact on the realization of the right to food;

25. Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food and the Special

Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and

transnational corporations and other business enterprises to cooperate on the subject

of the contribution of the private sector to the realization of the right to food,

including the importance of ensuring sustainable water resources for human

consumption and agriculture;

26. Recognizes the negative impact of massive rises in prices of food on

the realization of the right to food, particularly on people in developing countries with

a high level of dependence on food imports for the fulfilment of nutritional national

requirements;

27. Takes note of the report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food

(A/HRC/7/5), and of his valuable work in the promotion of the right to food in all

parts of the world and expresses its appreciation for the work and commitment of the

first mandate-holder to achieving the realization of the right to food;

28. Encourages the new mandate-holder on the right to food to discharge

his/her activities taking into account the important achievements in the fulfilment of

the mandate in recent years;

29. Supports the realization of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur as

extended for a period of three years by the Council in its resolution 6/2 of 27

September 2007;

30. Requests the Secretary-General and the United Nations High

Commissioner for Human Rights to provide all the necessary human and financial

resources for the effective fulfilment of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur;

31. Welcomes the work already done by the Committee on Economic,

Social and Cultural Rights in promoting the right to adequate food, in particular its

general comment No. 12 (1999) on the right to adequate food (article 11 of the

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), in which the

Committee affirmed, inter alia, that the right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to

the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfilment of

other human rights enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, and is also

inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic,

environmental and social policies, at both the national and the international levels,

oriented to the eradication of poverty and the fulfilment of all human rights for all;

32. Recalls general comment No. 15 (2002) of the Committee on the right

to water (articles 11 and 12 of the Covenant), in which the Committee noted, inter

alia, the importance of ensuring sustainable water resources for human consumption

and agriculture in the realization of the right to adequate food;

33. Reaffirms that the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive

Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security,

adopted by the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations in November 2004, represent a practical tool to promote the realization of the

right to food for all, contribute to the achievement of food security and thus provide

an additional instrument in the attainment of internationally agreed development

goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration;

34. Requests the Advisory Committee to consider potential

recommendations for approval by the Council on possible further measures to

enhance the realization of the right to food, bearing in mind the priority importance of

promoting the implementation of existing standards;

35. Welcomes the continued cooperation of the High Commissioner, the

Committee and the Special Rapporteur, and encourages them to continue their

cooperation in this regard;

36. Calls upon all Governments to cooperate with and assist the Special

Rapporteur in his/her task, to supply all necessary information requested by him/her

and to give serious consideration to responding favourably to the requests of the

Special Rapporteur to visit their countries to enable him/her to fulfil his/her mandate

more effectively;

37. Decides to convene a panel discussion on the realization of the right to

food in the period of its main session of 2009;

38. Recalls the requests made by the General Assembly, in its resolution

62/164, that the Special Rapporteur submit to it an interim report at its sixty-third

session on the implementation of that resolution and to continue his work, including

by examining the emerging issues with regard to the realization of the right to food

within his existing mandate, and by the Council that the Special Rapporteur submit to

it a comprehensive report on the fulfilment of his/her mandate in 2009, in accordance

with its annual programme of work;

39. Invites Governments, relevant United Nations agencies, funds and

programmes, treaty bodies and civil society actors, including non-governmental

organizations, as well as the private sector, to cooperate fully with the Special

Rapporteur in the fulfilment of his/her mandate, inter alia, through the submission of

comments and suggestions on ways and means of realizing the right to food;

40. Decides to continue the consideration of this matter under the same

agenda item in 2009 in accordance with its annual programme of work.

40th meeting 27 March 2008

Adopted without a vote.