March 2008
Despite real advances in China, India, South Africa, and several Latin American and Caribbean countries, overall there has been little progress in reducing the number of victims of hunger and malnutrition around the world, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Jean Ziegler said Tuesday.
The number of people suffering from hunger has increased every year since 1996, reaching an estimated 854 million people despite government commitments, at the 2000 Millennium Summit and at the 2002 World Food Summit, to halve hunger. Every five seconds, a child under 10 dies from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases, he added.
This alarming situation was highlighted by the UN human rights expert in his report (A/HRC/7/5)* presented Tuesday to the Human Rights Council, which is currently holding its substantive seventh session from 3-28 March.
Yet hunger and famine are not inevitable, said the report, citing the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as saying that the world already produces enough food to feed every child, woman and man and could feed 12 billion people, or double the current world population.
"Our world is richer than ever before, so how can we accept that 6 million children under 5 are killed every year by malnutrition and related illnesses? All human beings have the right to live in dignity, free from hunger," said Ziegler.
The rights expert's report points amongst others to what it describes as "schizophrenia" in the United Nations system and in States' policies, as well as the increasing control of vast sectors of the world economy by transnational corporations.
One of the key remaining problems is the lack of coherence within the UN system, between the positive developments in some sectors of the system, for example, as evidenced by the FAO's Right to Food Guidelines, and the way in which the policies and practices of other agencies, such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the World Trade Organization, undermine protection of the right to food.
While States have recognized the right to food in the World Food Summit Declarations and more than 150 States are parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), at the same time, they engage in trade policies that are detrimental to the enjoyment of human rights in other countries, said the report.
The Special Rapporteur expressed outrage that global hunger is still on the rise, according to the latest report of the FAO on the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006. Whereas in 1996, the number of people suffering from undernourishment was estimated at some 800 million people, FAO's latest estimate suggests that there are now 854 million who do not have enough to eat every day. Every year, more than 6 million children die from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday.
This is unacceptable, Ziegler said, adding that in a world overflowing with riches, hunger is not inevitable. It is a violation of human rights. The right to food is a human right that protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from hunger. It is protected under international human rights and humanitarian law.
While highlighting some positive developments in Honduras and the Philippines, the rights expert continued to be deeply concerned about the food crises that currently threaten the lives of millions of people across southern Africa. A recent FAO/WFP assessment confirms that an estimated 2.1 million people in southern Africa require food aid, a number that could double by early 2008.
Ziegler was equally concerned by the terms of new agreements being negotiated by the European Union (EU) under new Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
He was particularly concerned about the potential negative impacts of greater trade liberalization on peasant farmers in the ACP countries, especially given unfair competition with highly subsidized EU production. In these countries, where up to 80% of the population can be involved in peasant agriculture, unfair competition may push millions of African, Caribbean and Pacific peoples out of agriculture, leaving few other employment options.
In addition, said the rights expert, the new EPAs are likely to lead to substantial loss of revenue for ACP governments, most of which depend heavily on import taxes to raise revenue. Eliminating tariffs on EU imports would lower tariff revenues considerably, forcing these countries to cut fiscal expenditure and therefore jeopardizing social programmes and affecting governments' ability to meet their obligations in terms of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to food.
The Special Rapporteur believed that the profound internal contradictions within the international community are a key obstacle to the realization of the right to food. On the one hand, UN agencies such as FAO, World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) emphasize social justice and human rights and do excellent work in promoting the right to food, for example, as evidenced by the FAO's Right to Food Guidelines.
On the other hand, noted Ziegler, the Bretton Woods institutions, along with the US government and the WTO, refuse to recognize the mere existence of a human right to food and impose on the most vulnerable States the "Washington Consensus" emphasizing liberalization, deregulation, privatization and the compression of State domestic budgets, a model which in many cases produces greater inequalities.
In particular, three aspects of this general process of privatization and liberalization create catastrophic consequences for the right to food: the privatization of institutions and public utilities, the liberalization of agricultural trade, and the market-assisted model of land reform.
The Special Rapporteur pointed to his two missions to Niger which he said showed clearly how the market-based paradigm of development, largely imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, has been harmful to food security for the most vulnerable. Cost-recovery policies in health centres, for instance, mean that many poor children are not being treated for malnutrition. The privatization of government support services, including the logistics and food distribution system (OPVN) and the National Veterinary Office, has exacerbated food insecurity amongst small-scale farmers and pastoralists.
According to Ziegler, the schizophrenia of the United Nations system is also particularly evident in relation to land issues. In the Conference Declaration of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from 7-10 March 2006, 95 States recognized that one important way to ensure the fulfilment of the right to food was to establish appropriate land reform to secure access to land for marginalized and vulnerable groups, and to adopt adequate legal frameworks and policies to promote traditional and family agriculture.
At the same time, agencies such as the World Bank are promoting new models of agrarian reform which emphasize the market and are compatible with the Washington Consensus, a paradigm which is "inherently opposed to policy interventions aimed at achieving social equity".
The second aspect of this "schizophrenia", said the rights expert, is that many States are not at all coherent as far as their own practices are concerned. Far too often, one part of a government undertakes to protect and promote the right to food, while another part of the government takes decisions or implements policies that directly undermine this right.
Furthermore, wide disparities in economic power between States mean that powerful States negotiate trade rules that are neither free nor fair. Such rules severely affect small farmers and threaten food security, especially in developing countries that have been required to liberalize agriculture to a much greater extent than developed countries.
The heavy production and export subsidies that OECD countries grant their farmers - more than $349 billion in 2006 or almost $1 billion per day - mean that subsidized European fruit and vegetables can be found in a market stall in Dakar, Senegal, at lower prices than local produce.
In Mexico, said the report, it is estimated that up to 15 million Mexican farmers and their families (many from indigenous communities) may be displaced from their livelihoods as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and competition with subsidized US maize.
According to Ziegler, exclusion and discrimination are particularly evident in the case of women and indigenous people, who are also among the most vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition. It is now widely agreed that women produce 60-80% of food crops in developing countries and play a crucial part in ensuring the food security of households. Despite their key role in ensuring food security, 70% of the world's hungry are women or girls.
The report noted that a phenomenon that affects the right to food is the increasing control of vast sectors of the world economy by transnational corporations. Today, the top 200 corporations control around a quarter of the world's total productive assets.
Just 10 corporations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80% of the $28 billion global pesticide market. Another 10 corporations, including Cargill, control 57% of the total sales of the world's leading 30 retailers and account for 37% of the revenues earned by the world's top 100 food and beverage companies.
Although the participation of private sector corporations in food and agriculture sectors may improve efficiency, such concentration of monopoly power entails a danger that will benefit neither small producers nor consumers, said Ziegler. For
example, the design of genetically modified seeds has largely been about creating vertical integration between seed, pesticides and production to increase corporate profits.
No serious investments have been made in any of the five most important crops of the poorest countries - sorghum, millet, pigeon pea, chickpea and groundnut. Only 1% of the research and development budgets of multinational corporations is spent on crops that might be useful for the developing world in arid regions.
Moreover, transnational corporations have growing power over the supply of water, which is increasingly liberalized across the world. In many cases, private sector participation in water services has been made a precondition for the provision of loans and grants to developing countries by the IMF and the World Bank. Just three companies, Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Bechtel (USA), control a majority of private concessions worldwide.
"Despite the fact that the transnational corporations increasingly control our food and water system, there are still relatively few mechanisms in place to ensure that they respect standards and do not violate human rights," said the rights expert.
Another issue of grave concern for the right to food is the effect that biofuels will have upon hunger. It is estimated that it takes about 200 kg of maize to fill one car's tank with biofuel (about 50 litres), which is enough food to feed one person for one year.
There are therefore serious risks of creating a battle between food and fuel that will leave the poor and hungry in developing countries at the mercy of rapidly rising prices for food, land and water, said the report, citing the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) as estimating that prices will rise dramatically in the near future if the production of biofuels is increased - forecasting a rise of 20% in the international price of maize between now and 2010, and 41% by 2020.
The Special Rapporteur said that instead of using food crops, biofuels should be made from non-food plants, particularly those that can be grown in semi-arid and arid regions, and agricultural wastes, reducing competition for food, land and water. He called for a five-year worldwide moratorium concerning the production of biofuel and of biofuel diesel.
Among the recommendations outlined in the report are that all States should take immediate action to realize the human right to food of all their people. The key initiatives of the governments of Brazil, Cuba and Bolivia observed by the Special Rapporteur during his country missions set an example for the rest of the world.
All States should also ensure that their international political and economic policies, including international trade agreements, do not have negative impacts on the right to food in other countries. In this context, European Union governments must ensure that EPA agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries do not negatively affect the progressive realization of the right to food in those countries and include safeguard mechanisms to allow appropriate responses to any resulting food insecurity and hunger.
States should improve the international supervisory mechanisms for transnational corporations, especially those which control the food and water system, to ensure that they respect the right to food. This should include discussing and adopting the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, said the report.
* Read the full report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler (PDF)
