IV-d. Advocacy
The foundations for the human right to food and nutrition were set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in several other instruments. It was not until the mid-1980s that construction on these foundations really began. As shown in the preceding sections, the international agencies have been moving rapidly. Many of these official actions were pushed along by relatively invisible private individuals and groups.
Asbj�rn Eide began his work on the right to food in 1982. In 1984 he and his colleagues published Food as a Human Right. In the same year Philip Alston and Katarina Tomaševski published The Right to Food. These initiatives provided a strong intellectual basis for further work.
In July 1992, at a conference of the International Peace Research Association in Kyoto, I presented a paper on children’s right to adequate nutrition (Kent 1993). On the following day I was asked to take over as co-coordinator of the association’s Food Policy Study Group, along with Maria Eugenia Villareal of Guatemala. Anticipating the International Conference on Nutrition (ICN) that was scheduled to be held in Rome in December 1992, the group decided to organize workshops and other events in Rome at the time of the ICN, focussed on children’s right to adequate nutrition. Villareal and I were asked to take the lead in organizing it.
As our plans were taking shape, we circulated a letter to inform people about the activities that were being planned, and to invite broad participation. As a result we learned that another group had met in Oslo, also in July 1992, to explore the idea of creating a new organization, the World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights (WANAHR). We also learned that Asbj�rn Eide, then Director of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, had been selected to serve as the Coordinator for WANAHR’s interim steering committee. An exchange of faxes with him soon led to agreement that it would be wise to link the FPSG-IPRA and WANAHR efforts. We decided to meet in Rome, just before the ICN. At those meetings, we agreed to join our efforts together. WANAHR was formally launched at a conference held at UNICEF’s Innocenti Center in Florence in May 1994.
Civil society organizations (or NGOs) played particularly important roles at the World Food Summit of 1996 and in the followup action. As Asbj�rn Eide describes it:
More than 1,000 organizations from more than 80 countries attended the parallel NGO Forum during the Summit. One of their demands was the preparation of a code of conduct on the right to adequate food. In objective 7.4 of the Summit Plan of Action, the World Food Summit opened up the possibility of preparing "voluntary guidelines" for promoting the right to food and food security. FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN), the World Alliance for Nutrition and Human Rights and the Jacques Maritain Institute took the initiative and have jointly drafted such a code in consultation with a large number of other NGOs worldwide. It sets out the normative content of the human right to adequate food, the corresponding obligations including State obligations at the national level and at the international level, the responsibilities of international organizations, and regulation of economic enterprises and other actors. It deals with the national framework for monitoring and recourse procedures, and with international reporting and support mechanisms. The draft code also sets out responsibilities of the actors of civil society. The NGOs involved intend to place the proposed code of conduct on the agendas of the Commission on Human Rights and the FAO Committee on Food Security (Eide, Asbj�rn 1999, para. 112).
The Draft International Code of Conduct on the Human Right to Adequate Food has been endorsed by hundreds of nongovernmental organizations. Its definition of food rights was adopted at the Second Expert Consultation on the Right to Food held in Rome in November 1998.
WANAHR also worked closely with the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action. WABA’s Global Forum held in Thailand in December 1996 focused on "Children’s Health, Children’s Rights". WABA has been undertaking a variety of activities to clarify and promote breastfeeding rights, especially in relation to issues of maternity leave and the need to facilitate breastfeeding by working women.
Through the 1990s numerous studies have been published on the human right to food and nutrition. Included among these are special issues on the topic in the journal Food Policy in March 1996 and in the International Journal of Children’s Rights in 1997. Hunger Notes came out with a special issue on the right to food in 1998. WANAHR publishes the WANAHR Bulletin. FIAN publishes a periodical entitled Hungry for What is Right. Asbj�rn Eide was invited by the United Nations to prepare an updated version of the monograph on Right to Adequate Food as Human Right that he was asked to write more than a decade ago. The preparation of this tutorial on behalf of WANAHR was launched during a sabbatical I spent in Oslo in late 1998, working with Asbj�rn Eide and Wenche Barth Eide.
From the outset, WANAHR focussed much of its energy on the United Nations agencies, particularly the UN’s Administrative Committee on Coordination/Subcommittee on Nutrition, commonly known as SCN. It is now also called the United Nations Forum on Nutrition. Largely through WANAHR’s efforts, SCN agreed to establish a Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics, and Human Rights (WGNEHR), to function alongside the SCN’s more technically oriented working groups.
The WGNEHR had its first meeting at the SCN conference held in New York in 1994. Then and in subsequent SCN conferences, the UN agencies expressed mild interest in the rights approach advocated by WGNEHR, but this was overshadowed by their skepticism. However, at the SCN conference held in Oslo in 1998, the tide turned, and the agencies became receptive. They agreed that the SCN conference to be held in 1999 would focus on the rights approach. Moreover, it was arranged that the conference would be held in Geneva and would be hosted by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.
The 1999 SCN conference went well. The High Commissioner spoke eloquently in support of the human rights approach to food and nutrition (Robinson). The new director of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland, also spoke strongly in favor of the human rights approach. During the symposium session and during the working meetings, many of the SCN's member organizations spoke of their support for the approach.
The receptivity of the United Nations agencies to the human rights approach to food and nutrition that has become visible since 1998 did not arise simply because of the advocacy efforts of groups like WANAHR and FIAN. The United Nations agencies generally are moving to incorporate the human rights approach in their work. In January 1996 the UNICEF Board approved a new mission statement in which the Convention on the Rights of the Child was recognized as the long-term basis for UNICEF’s work. The United Nations Development Programme is orienting its work on the basis of the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986. In 1998 the UNDP published a policy document on Integrating Human Rights with Sustainable Human Development. Similarly, the United Nations Population Fund issued a document on UNFPA: A Focus on Population and Human Rights, and the World Bank published Development and Human Rights: The Role of the World Bank. Under the new United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) launched by Secretary General Kofi Annan, all UN agencies are called upon to adopt the human rights approach. Thus, WANAHR and the other nutrition rights advocacy organizations have benefited from a movement not entirely of their own making.
The receptivity of the United Nations agencies to the human rights approach that has become visible since 1998 did not arise simply because of the advocacy efforts of groups like WANAHR and FIAN. The United Nations agencies generally are moving to incorporate the human rights approach in their work. In January 1996 the UNICEF Board approved a new mission statement in which the Convention on the Rights of the Child was recognized as the long-term basis for UNICEF’s work. The United Nations Development Programme is orienting its work on the basis of the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986 (United Nations Development Programme 1998). Under the new United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) launched by Secretary General Kofi Annan, all UN agencies are called upon to adopt the human rights approach. Thus, WANAHR and the other nutrition rights advocacy organizations have benefited from a movement not entirely of their own making.
They understand that their work is just beginning. While the advocacy efforts have made good progress at the international level, it is clear that there is now much work that remains to be done, especially within nations.
Continue to IV-e. General Comment 12
Subsection IV-d last updated on September 27, 1999