Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
suh as the duty to investigate, access to justice and the obligation to provide efect-
ive remedies. For example, pollution of a community's water supply by a company
ought to be followed by government action, suh as investigation, prosecution, and
so on. Regulations regarding water quality, environmental protection, and other suh
legislation must be in place.
he
obligation to fulfil
entails two important aspects. Firstly,
facilitation:
gov-
ernments must take positive action to identify vulnerable groups and to implement
policies to ensure their access to adequate food by facilitating their ability to feed
themselves. Introducing agrarian reform policies with the intention of improving the
employment prospects of landless peasants could be suh a facilitation policy. he
second aspect refers to the obligation
to provide
direct assistance in situations in
whih people's food security is threatened for reasons beyond their control. To clari-
fy, if a government decides to let people starve when these people have no alternat-
ive for helping themselves, this is a violation of the right to food. While the govern-
ment itself might be unable to provide food for the population plagued by starvation,
it nonetheless has the obligation to appeal for international humanitarian aid. Not
making the appeal would be a violation of the right to food.
Understanding this three-layered obligation framework is essential. By beter
understanding the normative content of the right to food we can appreciate that
attempts to portray the right to food as akin to requiring governments to provide
everyone with caviar and hampagne are simply fallacious. It also serves to show
that the right to food is ultimately about the empowerment of individuals and com-
munities, and by no means about dependency on state aid or harity.
To complete the normative framework, we should address three other important
elements: progressive realization, non-discrimination and extra-territorial obliga-
tions. As the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stip-
ulates (Commitee, 1999), the fulilment of the right to food must be ahieved 'pro-
gressively' and by using the 'maximum available resources'. This means that ret-
rogressive steps are, in general, not acceptable. The current economic crisis should
not be used as an excuse to cut bak or dismantle social safety nets whih provide
those in desperate situations with minimal security, in particular access to food. In
addition, human rights' law also establishes a general prohibition of discrimination,
establishing there must be no delay in ensuring access to food and resources on a
non-discriminatory basis.
