TIGblogs TIG | TIGblogs GROUP TIGBLOGS LOGIN SIGNUP
GSimon's TIGBlog
GSimon's TIGBlog
« previous 5


Right to Food cont'd - Facts and Figures
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I took some notes from the last report for the UN, Building resilience: A human rights framework for world food and nutrition security, from Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Human Rights Council. Olivier De Schutter is absolutely wonderful and I am amazed at everything he is doing to advocate positive change for the right to food. The main idea of the document is that the current increase in food prices can be seized as an opportunity in order to advance the realization of the right to food by the adoption of structural measures, leading to a profound reform of the global food system.
Here is a random list of facts and figures I compiled:
- It has been estimated that with a 20 per cent increase in food prices in 2025 relative to the 1996 baseline, the number of undernourished people in the world would increase by 440 million
- It has been estimated that the production of food will have to increase by 50 per cent by 2030, and double by 2050, if an increase growth in demand is to be met
- Most of the food insecure live in rural areas. Agricultural workers are among the most vulnerable, owing due to the often informal character of their employment, depriving them of legal protection from their employers. They amount to 450 million, and represent 40 per cent of the world's agricultural work force.
- There are approximately 500 million small-holder households, totalling 1.5 billion people, living on two hectares of land or less. Many are facing an unprecedented increase in the price of inputs, as a result of the increase of the price of oil and, for livestock farmers, of crops, at the very same moment that, as net food buyers, they are spending larger amounts of their budgets on food.
- The surge in prices in 2006-2008 is the result of policies that have systematically undermined the agricultural sector in a number of developing countries over a period of 30 years
- Food crops currently used to produce ethanol are also the crops that form the largest part of the diets of poor people, maize, sugar cane, soy, cassava, palm oil and sorghum provide around 30 per cent of mean calorie consumption of people living in chronic hunger. There is a need for international guidelines on the production of agrofuels
- At both ends of the chain (producers and retailers) and in the middle (the food processing sector), the degree of concentration is particularly high: for instance, the 10 leading food retailers have a 24 per cent share of the $3.5 billion global market, and their activities in developing countries have expanded dramatically in recent years.
- “Cargill, the world’s biggest grain trader, achieved an 86 per cent increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year. Bunge, another huge food trader, had a 77 per cent increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67 per cent increase in profits in 2007. Nor are retail giants taking the strain: profits at Tesco, the UK supermarket giant, rose by a record 11.8 per cent last year. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and Wal-Mart of the US, say that food sales are the main sector sustaining their profit increases” (GRAIN report, Making a killing from hunger, April 2008, available from: www.grain.org/articles/?id=39)
- In 2007, approximately 23 per cent of coarse grain production in the U.S. was used to produce ethanol, for a share of ethanol in the gasoline transport fuel market of 4.5 per cent in 2008; in the EU, although 47 per cent of vegetable oil production was used in the production of biodiesel, causing higher imports of vegetable oil to meet domestic consumption needs, the biodiesel share of the diesel transport fuel market was 3.0 per cent.

November 7, 2008 | 8:29 PM Comments  0 comments


Right to Food Conference
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Friday September 8th, 2008. I attended a conference organized by Rights & Democracy and the Canadian FoodGrains Bank on the theme: “Solutions for Hunger - A Policy Seminar on the Human Right to Food”. Basically we discussed how the Right to food (adequate food) should be incorporated in the national laws of every country, and in the mandate of international UN agencies. I have understood the “right to food” primarily as a participatory approach by which people can actually participate in the process of establishing or advocating for good food policies such as claiming the right to food. Indeed many countries ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which article 11 says “The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.” According to international law, every people if they could not have any response from their national judicial system to claim their rights were violated, can have access to an international court. Other international commitments are enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Additionally, article 56 of the Charter of the United Nations that states must cooperate in the identification and elimination of the obstacles to the full realization of the right to food. In 2004, the FAO adopted “Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of Food Security at the National Level” (the Guidelines) as a follow up to the World Food Summit series of conferences. The Guidelines provide a roadmap for states and civil society who want to apply the human rights framework for strategies to end hunger. Since their adoption, the Guidelines have inspired a number of initiatives designed to implement the human right to food. These initiatives have included country-level assessments, grassroots awareness campaigns, legislative and judicial procedures and violation monitoring.
I want to use this blog to write stuff I learned. For those interested in having access to some resources, they can read the following documents:
Building resilience: A human rights framework for world food and nutrition security, Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Human Rights Council http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/
Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of Food Security at the National Level
www.fao.org/docrep/meeting/009/y9825e/y9825e00.htm
3 case studies:
The Human Right to Food in Malawi: Results of an international fact-finding mission, Rights & Democracy and FIAN International, 2006
www.dd-rd.ca/site/_PDF/publications/globalization/food/food_malawi.pdf
The Human Right to Food in Nepal: Results of an international fact-finding mission, Rights & Democracy, 2007
www.dd-rd.ca/site/_PDF/publications/globalization/food/report_nepal_sep07.pdf
The Human Right to Food in Haiti: Results of an international fact-finding mission, Rights & Democracy and GRAMIR, 2008 http://www.dd-rd.ca/site/publications/index.php?id=2316&subsection=catalogue



November 7, 2008 | 7:58 PM Comments  0 comments


Définition de la violence
Translations available in: French (original) | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | English | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

D? nition of violence
Automatically translated into English thanks to WorldLingo
Violence G? ralise? outes the situations O? be? be human are influenc? of such F? what their current, somatic and mental achievement is inf? or? or potential achievement ".

Johan Galtung

March 31, 2008 | 10:10 PM Comments  0 comments
Tags:


Human Rights
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

Eleanor Roosevelt