FAO Renews Its Commitment to Right to Food Guidelines

A family resides in a displacement shelter in the Gaza Strip with little access to food. War-torn regions such as Gaza are highly susceptible to widespread acute food insecurity. Credit: UNICEF/Abed Zagout

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 2024 (IPS)

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched its newest report on the Right to Food Guidelines on December 10, which focuses on that focused on the urgency of food security as well as the measures that will be taken by the organization to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in the coming decade.

At the launch event for the report, titled “Realizing the Right to Food in a Changing World: The Right to Food Guidelines – 20 Years On and Beyond”, the importance of global cooperation in securing universal access to food was emphasized, for access to food is a fundamental human right.

“The right to adequate food stands as a cornerstone, essential for advancing food security, wellbeing and human dignity, leaving no one behind. Every woman, man, and child is entitled to these rights at all times,” said Maximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist, FAO.

In 2004, FAO adopted the Right to Food Guidelines, a document that laid the groundwork for states to implement the right to food for every citizen. Despite FAO making much progress in the years since, heightened challenges, such as the climate crisis and extended warfare, have made the implementation of these guidelines difficult in many parts of the world.

Todd Howland, the Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, highlighted the urgency of the current global food situation and how conditions worsened following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Despite our efforts, a global review of agrifood systems today tells us we’re far from realizing the right to food. In 2023, approximately 757 million people experienced hunger, representing 9.1 percent of the global population, compared to 7.5 percent in 2019. Over a quarter of the global population also experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in 2023, accounting for 383 million more people than in 2019. As a result of this undernourishment and food insecurity, last year 148 million children under the age of five had stunted growth,” said Howland.

It is estimated by the Integrated Food Security Classification Phase (IPC) that approximately 1.9 million people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger. Due to escalating violence, frequent climate shocks, and economic downturns, millions of people around the world rely on humanitarian assistance for food.

FAO has stated that the immediate future for these areas is “deeply concerning”, with no indication that conditions will improve anytime soon. Roughly two-thirds of the world relies on agriculture for their livelihoods. Due to agricultural systems facing severe disruptions, humanitarian assistance is needed to supplement economic failures and food insecurity.

“Emergency agriculture assistance is a lifeline and offers a pathway out of hunger, even in the midst of violence and climate shocks. It has life-saving impacts on vulnerable populations enabling them to continue producing food locally to feed themselves, their families and their communities,” says FAO Deputy-Director General Beth Bechdol. However, due to significant gaps in funding, emergency agriculture assistance fails to offer substantial increases in nationwide food security.

During the event, FAO emphasized their upcoming initiatives that aim to ensure universal access to food. Torero Cullen stated that FAO must take systemic issues such as poverty and inequality into account while also scaling up investments in food security and nutrition. Transparency will be crucial moving forward as better access to justice and streamlined monitoring systems are essential in tracking progress and maximizing accountability.

Additionally, FAO confirmed that their agenda moving forward will be to further implement international humanitarian law in their work. In the past two years, the use of starvation as a weapon of war has become prevalent in areas such as Gaza, Sudan, and Haiti.

Sofia Monsalve Suarez, the Secretary-General of FIAN International, a human rights organization that focuses on global food access, stated that it is imperative for human rights organizations, like FIAN and FAO, to condemn such actions.

“The challenge ahead would be to further compliment international humanitarian law with the normative development of the rights to food and nutrition in the past few years,” Monsalve Suarez said. “We could improve the monitoring of food crisis situations using human rights basic principles, connecting the monitoring mechanisms to political or decision-making bodies.”

Another priority for FAO and its partners would be to address the detrimental impacts of corporate concentration when it comes to food production and distribution. Monsalve Suarez remarked that the distribution of land among corporations is currently very unbalanced in terms of concentration. “I don’t think that we will be able to face the challenges of climate change and biodiversity recovery without tackling the inequality of land access,” she said.

For 2025, FAO has launched an appeal for 1.9 billion dollars to provide “life-saving, emergency agriculture assistance” to over 49 million people. If this goal is met, tens of millions of people around the world would be able to produce their own food and make it out of acute food insecurity. With global food insecurity deepening across the globe, FAO urges donor contributions.

IPS UN Bureau Report