SECTION IX:
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GOVERNANCE

IX-a. International Food and Nutrition Rights

Consider the dimensions of malnutrition worldwide, as outlined in Subsection II-a. Consider also the enormous disparities in national resources. The human right to food and nutrition would mean very little if obligations to honor that right were limited only to one's own government, one's own nation. The children of, say, Togo or Malawi, are born into poor countries, but they are not born into a poor world.

There is much discussion of international protection of human rights, but what does that mean? A 1990 brochure from UNICEF and the UN Centre for Human Rights says in its title that Children's Rights Need International Protection and suggests that the new Convention on the Rights of the Child responds to that need. The convention does affirm international rights, but these are not hard international rights in the sense described in Subsection VI-c. If one party has a hard right to something, some other party must have the duty to provide it. Human rights are really international--in the sense of transcending national borders--only if, upon failure of a national government to do what needed to be done to fulfill those rights, the international community was obligated to step in to do what was necessary–with no excuses. There is now no mechanism and no commitment to do that with regard to children's rights, food and nutrition rights, and many other kinds of rights. The international community provides humanitarian assistance in many different circumstances, but it is not required to do so. Currently, "international law imposes no obligation on States to respond to requests for assistance or to make offers of contributions for relief operations in other countries (Macalister-Smith, p. 56)." And "there is still no international convention setting out obligations of States concerning the donation or acceptance of humanitarian assistance or regulating the coordination of relief in peacetime (Macalister-Smith, pp. 109-110)."

The international human rights instruments are concerned primarily with the responsibilities of States Parties to their own people, not to people elsewhere. Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights does require States Parties individually and through international cooperation to take the measures needed to implement "the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger," so the language does in fact speak of international obligations. In practice, however, there is no clear, hard duty with corresponding measures to assure accountability. There is no international history of case law with respect to nutrition rights. There is no hard international law with respect to nutrition rights.

While national governments should be seen as the primary duty-bearers with regard to the human right to food and nutrition, it should be recognized that the international community has specific obligations as well. This derives directly from its moral responsibilities and its role in the "rings of responsibility," as discussed in Subsection VII-a. In the rings of responsibility image described there, the international community is the outer ring, the last resort in looking after people's well-being. The very outermost ring is comprised of the international governmental organizations (IGOs). The international bodies' task is not to deliver services to the needy directly but, to the extent possible, to empower agencies in the inner rings. People who are malnourished are people of particular nations, but they are also people of the world, and they have rights claims not only in relation to their nations but also in relation to the world as a whole.

This international obligation to provide assistance should stand unconditionally where national governments, or more generally, those in power, consent to receiving the assistance. The obligation must be mitigated, however, where those in power refuse the assistance and delivering the assistance would require facing extraordinary risks.

The argument is particularly clear in relation to armed conflict situations. International humanitarian law (see Subsection III-b) asserts that hunger is not to be used as an instrument of warfare. As we know from Bosnia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, and many other places, nutrition rights have not been honored in conflict situations. In his opening address at the International Conference on Nutrition, Pope John Paul II articulated the duty that should be acknowledged:

Wars between nations and civil conflicts should not be allowed to condemn defenceless civilians to die of hunger for selfish or partisan reasons. In such instances, we must in any case ensure that food and health aid get through, by removing all obstacles, including those arising from arbitrary recourse to the principle of non-interference in a country's internal affairs. The conscience of humanity, now backed by the provisions of international humanitarian law, demands compulsory humanitarian intervention when the survival of entire ethnic groups and populations is seriously compromised: this is a duty for nations and for the international community ....

The idea of compulsory humanitarian intervention is new, one that is yet to be considered seriously by the international community. Before insisting on such intervention in difficult conflict situations, however, the international community should first review the principles under which it will provide assistance in orderly ways in non-conflict situations. Humanitarian assistance is easier to deliver than humanitarian intervention because, by definition, intervention indicates that there is a need to overcome resistance to the delivery of assistance. The following subsection offers an overview of the system of international humanitarian assistance.

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Section IX-a last updated on June 13, 1999