CHAPTER 3: FOOD SECURITY CONCEPTS
3.3 Food security as a basic human right
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Nigeria, and South Africa. And close to half of the growth from 2000 to 2011 came from just two countries: Nigeria and Uganda.
Figure: 3.1: Public agricultural spending in Africa, south of the Sahara, 2000 and 2011
Adapted from IFPRI, 2014
The above figure shows the amount of expenditure on agriculture by different governments. It also shows that governments have largely not as yet met the 10% expenditure on agriculture under the CAADP commitments.
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physical and economic access to enough safe, nutritious food to lead healthy and active lives.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also gave national governments the primary responsibility for promoting food security. The promotion and operationalisation of these rights were recognized as operating at three levels namely:
Obligations to respect: The State must not interfere with individuals’ livelihoods. If national legislation is found to have such an effect, then immediate action must be taken to correct it.
Obligations to protect: This requires regulations against poor conduct by non-State actors that would hinder people from acquiring adequate, safe food. These regulations cover food hygiene, quality and labelling standards, labour conditions and land tenure. Regulations must also protect against unfair market practices, such as withholding price information or creating monopolies.
Obligations to fulfill: This requires action by the State to identify vulnerable groups and to design policies that improve their access to food-producing resources or income. As a last resort, direct assistance may be needed to ensure that, at a minimum, people do not experience hunger and poverty.
The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) creates another impetus for the propagation of the right to food and gender equality. Article 14 requires States to take into account the “particular problems faced by rural women and ensure they participate in and benefit from agriculture and rural development”. Specifically, under this article States Parties shall ensure that rural women have the right to, among others: benefit from social security programmes, obtain access to credit, markets, technology and equal treatment in land and agrarian reform and land resettlement schemes. Article 13(b), requires States Parties to ensure that women have the same rights to financial credit as men, and directly supports Article 14’s provision (g) on rural women’s access to agricultural credit and loans. These are critical to addressing the challenge of access to resources that farming women encounter.
Articles 15 (paragraph 2) and 16(h) require States Parties to ensure that women have the same property rights as men. For rural women dependent on agriculture, land is the most important productive asset (World Bank, 2008). Fulfilment of these commitments matter to women and girls and should be seen as an objective in its own right, essential to full attainment by women and girls of their right to food.
Accordingly, and in response, the 1996 WFS set a target of a reduction in the number of hungry people by at least 20 million every year between 2000 and 2015. While some regions made
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impressive progress over the two decades preceding 2000, demonstrating that hunger is not an intractable problem, the number of undernourished people worldwide reveals that since the 1996 WFS, the average annual decrease has been only 2.5 million, far below the level required to reach the WFS goal of halving the number of undernourished people by 2015.
The World Food Conference (WFC) (1996) was also entrusted with developing ways and means of mobilizing the international community to take specific action to resolve the world food problem within the broader context of development and international economic co- operation. The WFC accepted the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition as a basis for its plans, part of which recognised that:
The grave food crisis that is afflicting the peoples of the developing countries where most of the world's hungry and ill-nourished live and where more than two thirds of the world's population produce about one third of the world's food - an imbalance which threatens to increase in the next 10 years - is not only fraught with grave economic and social implications, but also acutely jeopardizes the most fundamental principles and values associated with the right to life and human dignity as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (p.5).
The World Food Conference also declared that:
1. Every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop fully and maintain their physical and mental faculties. Society today already possesses sufficient resources, organizational ability and technology, and hence the competence to achieve this objective. Accordingly, the eradication of hunger is a common objective of all the countries of the international community, especially of the developed countries and others in a position to help;
2. It is a fundamental responsibility of Governments to work together for higher food production and a more equitable and efficient distribution of food between countries and within countries.
Governments should initiate immediately a greater concerted attack on chronic malnutrition and deficiency diseases among the vulnerable and lower income groups. In order to ensure adequate nutrition for all, Governments should formulate appropriate food and nutrition policies integrated in overall socio-economic and agricultural development plans based on adequate knowledge of available as well as potential food resources.
Furthermore, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) also recognized the importance of addressing hunger and poverty and Goal 1 sought to: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger,
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Halve between 1990 and 2015, reduce by two thirds, between 2002 and 2015, the proportion of under-five children who are undernourished.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a successor to the MDGs also note the importance of ensuring nations have food security. International level commitment towards food security is therefore very apparent and clearly focused towards the elimination of hunger in all nations.
Addressing food insecurity or hunger must not be just a political commitment; it must be translated to practical actions. Of note also is that hunger is very much a part of African pre- and post-colonial history. The continent has experienced almost cyclical patterns of hunger with the most significant being that experienced in Ethiopia between 1984 and 1985. The crisis attracted international support which culminated in US200 million being raised from the US government to feed the nation (Sen, 1989). The African Union Agenda 20631 which is a
“strategic framework for the socio-economic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years which builds on, and seeks to accelerate the implementation of past and existing continental initiatives for growth and sustainable development,” also recognises the importance of human rights. It has seven aspirations, one of which is “an Africa of good governance, democracy, and respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law”. All of these cannot be fulfilled in the absence of food security and gender equity. Food insecurity is clearly a product of a myriad of factors. The most prominent are discussed below.