On Monday 6 April 2009 the President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) opened an interactive thematic dialogue of the UNGA on the global food crisis and the right to food. He called for a “new politics of food” that would bring an end to food production being dominated by few corporations, and make way for a more “people-oriented food system that respects communities and their right to food”. The President agreed wholeheartedly with the keynote speaker, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Mr. Olivier de Schutter, that the global food crisis provided an opportunity to redesign world food production and international trade to ensure that they fostered development, gave effect to the right to the human right to food, and prioritised the needs of the poorest.
Joining the President of the General Assembly to examine the policy
options that could solve the food crisis were expert panelists from a
variety of disciplines and backgrounds.* All were firmly of the view
that it was unacceptable that the number of people going hungry was now
approaching 1 billion, or one in six people in the world. They agreed
that the global food crisis was a human rights issue that was most
heavily impacting on the poor and marginalized, particularly women and
children, due to their lack of purchasing power to purchase available
food. There was also agreement that in addition to the twin track
approach to the global crisis (i.e. providing food and humanitarian
assistance, and improving food production levels and smallholder
agriculture), a third track was needed, namely the recognition of the
right to food as a human right recognized in international law.
According to one panelist, US Congressman, Mr. Jim McGovern, another
critical missing element was the political will to end hunger.
Among the policy recommendations outlined by the Special Rapporteur was
the need for States to develop national strategies to operationalise
the right to food domestically. Government should map which groups were
the most vulnerable to hunger, develop social safety nets to protect
these groups, allocate responsibilities across government to achieve
food security, set benchmarks and impose timeframes to attain this
goal, and empower independent institutions, including courts, in order
to enhance government accountability and provide remedies when a
violation of the right to food occurred. At the international level,
the Special Rapporteur warned against ‘welfare colonialism’ in which
developing countries were aided to produce goods for the global market,
but were not able to exercise their right to development. Instead, he
called for States and transnational agri-food companies to work
together with other stakeholders, including the most marginalised, to
redesign international trade to ensure it served the development
agenda and assisted in the realization of the right to food.
Following the panel discussion, statements were made by Sudan (on
behalf of the Group of 77 and China); Czech Republic (European Union);
Mexico (Rio Group); Bangladesh (Least Developed Countries); South
Africa (African Group), Columbia and the Russian Federation. A webcast
of the interactive dialogue and two related panel discussions is
available here.
This initiative of the GA precedes a possible world summit on global food security that is planned for November 2009.
*Members of the first panel discussion were: Mr. Sanjay Reddy
(Assistant Professor of Economics, Columbia University); Mr. Daniel De
La Torre Ugarte (Professor of Agricultural Economic, University of
Tennessee); Mr. Jim McGovern (US Congressman and Chair of the House
Hunger Caucus); and Mr. Pedro Medrano Rojas (Chairman of the FAO
Committee on World Food Security).
|
