ADVISORY COMMITTEE DISCUSSES DISCRIMINATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RIGHT TO FOOD

The Human Rights Council Advisory Committee this afternoon discussed a preliminary report of the drafting group on the right to food on the issue of discrimination in the context of the right to food.

Jean Ziegler, Committee Expert and member of the drafting group, underscored that every five seconds a child died from hunger. One person out of six was severely undernourished and that situation worsened daily. World agriculture could easily feed 12 billion people. Hunger and starvation were therefore not inevitable and every single child dying from hunger was thus being murdered. Also highlighted was the issue of the lack of investment in agriculture in African countries. Those countries’ foreign debts were so burdensome that there was not much left for them to invest. The dictates of the World Trade Organization had also led to the snapping-up of land in Africa by international corporations, foreign States, investment funds and trust companies. In addition, the budget of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) – which had normally been $6 billion – had now been reduced to $4 billion. That was owing to the collapse in subsidies of developed countries, which had used money to save the very same banks that had caused the current economic crisis.

Jose Antonio Bengoa Cabello, Advisory Committee Vice-Chairperson and member of the drafting group, observed that there was no specific place in the United Nations system where rural poverty was being dealt with. Although the problem had been dealt with by FAO in the past, there had been no human rights body to discuss these issues from a human rights perspective. There was a need to create such a space for a discussion. Another concern was that the issue of food had only been dealt with in the context of disaster reduction and direct aid.

Mona Zulficar, Advisory Committee Expert and member of the drafting group, said that rural women had problems with access to land, property, markets, health care and education. All those elements were intertwined and crystallized in the context of the right to food. Women produced more than 50 per cent of the food that was consumed globally, yet 70 per cent of them were undernourished.

Chinsung Chung, Advisory Committee Expert and member of the drafting group, said that a number of good practices in the context of the right to food were listed in the report, such as microfinance for poor women in African countries. In addition, parties to the Stockholm Convention had agreed to limit the use of chemicals and other pollutants, and regulations with regard to the promotion of healthy food had already been established in many countries, including Bolivia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

In the ensuing discussion, Committee Experts noted that the issue they were discussing had become even more urgent since the food crisis had happened. States had to respect and protect human rights, which included the right to food. It was important to look at the rights of peasants and fishermen. The right to food in prisons should also be looked at; in some countries it was the detainees’ families who had to provide them with food. Committee members also addressed the issue of whether or not they should suggest the elaboration of a convention in this area. While an Expert said the Advisory Committee should not propose a new convention every time it looked at an issue, others underscored the importance of having an exchange of views and highlighted the role declarations and conventions played in making visible certain issues that would otherwise remain invisible in society.

Non-governmental organization representatives speaking today welcomed the study and drew attention to the right to food in the context of the present environmental crisis, financial crisis and water crisis. Indigenous peoples’ right to food was directly linked to their territory. While the settlers had been in their territory, their lands had been turned into agricultural lands driving out their traditional foods. They could go to a grocery store; however, the quality of food available to them had led to an epidemic of diabetes among their peoples.

Also speaking in this afternoon’s discussion were Committee Members Dheerujlall Seetulsingh and Emmanuel Decaux; and representatives from the following NGOs: the Indian Movement Tupaj Amaru, in a joint statement with the World Peace Council; Centre Europe - Tiers Monde; the Indian Council of South America, in a joint statement with the International Council for Human Rights and the Indigenous Peoples and Nations Coalition; and the Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’amitié entre les Peuples (MRAP).

The next meeting of the Committee will be at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 28 January 2010, in Room XIX, when it will address remaining requests stemming from the Human Rights Council, including on the integration of a gender perspective in the Committee’s mandate; the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order; the integration of the perspective of persons with disabilities; and on human rights and international solidarity.


Discussion on Discrimination in the Context of the Right to Food

JEAN ZIEGLER, Advisory Committee Vice-Chairperson and member of the drafting group on the right to food, introducing the preliminary report on discrimination in the context of the right to food on behalf of the working group on the right to food, said that the group had worked very efficiently and that several institutions and non-governmental organizations had collaborated in the drafting of the report. The preliminary report was open to change, and the group was also ready take on board proposals stemming from today’s discussion. Recalling the problem of hunger in the world, he underscored the fact that a child died from hunger every five seconds. One person out of six was severely undernourished and that situation worsened daily. World agriculture could easily feed 12 billion people. Hunger and starvation were thus not inevitable and every single child dying from hunger was thus being murdered.

Mr. Ziegler highlighted the issue of the lack of investment in agriculture in African countries. Those countries’ foreign debts were so burdensome that there was not much left for them to invest. Another issue that needed to be discussed by the international community was the clash between the right to food and neo-liberalism. The dictates of the World Trade Organization had led to the snapping-up of land in Africa by international corporations, foreign States, investment funds and trust companies. The World Bank argued that those practices brought money to those countries; but, clearly, civil society, farmers themselves and trade unions all saw those practices – which were starting to be widespread – as completely unacceptable. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) had even called that new practice a sort of neo-colonialism. It was also worth highlighting that FAO’s budget, which had normally been $6 billion, had now been reduced to $4 billion because of the collapse in subsidies by developed countries, which had used money to save the very same banks that had caused the current economic crisis.

JOSE ANTONIO BENGOA CABELLO, Advisory Committee Vice-Chairperson and member of the drafting group on the right to food, observed that there was no specific place in the United Nations system where the issue of rural poverty was being dealt with. Although the problem had been dealt with by FAO in the past, there had been no human rights body to discuss those issues from a human rights perspective. There was a need to create such a space for discussion, as rural poverty was the most acute form of poverty. The rural theme had to do with the right to food, but it had also been related to indigenous populations’ rights. However, vulnerable non-indigenous populations had also been put at disadvantage. Another concern was that the issue of food had only been dealt with in the context of disaster reduction and direct aid. Therefore, rural rights and the rights of peasants had suffered and there was need to make progress in that regard.

MONA ZULFICAR, Advisory Committee Expert and member of the drafting group on the right to food, said that rural women were a striking example of the discrimination that affected women. They had problems with access to land, property, markets, health care and education. All those elements were intertwined and crystallized in the context of the right to food. Women produced more than 50 per cent of the food that was consumed globally, yet 70 per cent of them were undernourished. While they had access to land, they had no access to finances, mortgages or credit and could not gain the fruits of their own work. Government land distribution schemes had also been gender-blind. Studies showed that women’s contribution had an overall positive impact on productivity and food security. Yet, statistics showed that rural women made up the majority of the world’s poor. That was wasted human capital. Although they contributed to crop production, and were taking over greater responsibilities, women did not have access to markets or higher value-oriented market production. And they were not permitted to grow into commercial crop producers. Studies had, however, shown that rural women had been able to run small businesses more successfully than men. It had also been shown that a child’s survival increased by 20 per cent when a woman controlled the household budget. Government had not lived up to the task of addressing the gaps that had been identified in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

CHINSUNG CHUNG, Advisory Committee Expert and member of the drafting group on the right to food, said that good practices had been collected with regard to forms of cooperation, promotion of clean agriculture, and government policy on modified seeds, among others. A number of good practices in the context of the right to food were listed in the report, such as microfinance for poor women in African countries like Benin. In addition, parties to the Stockholm Convention had agreed to limit the use of chemicals and other pollutants, and regulations with regard to the promotion of healthy food had already been established in many countries, including Bolivia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

DHEERUJLALL SEETULSINGH, Advisory Committee Expert, said the issue of the right to determine prices of agricultural products should be addressed, and emphasized the important role the State played in that regard. Granting subsidies and storage facilities helped establish market price stability, as farmers extensively relied on those measures, which helped them sell their products. There was a need to link rural producers and urban consumers, as without intermediaries farmers were not able to sell their products. Finally, he highlighted that the spectrum of food prices in India was being discussed in the context of the drought and the global financial crisis. That was important as the situation in India had an impact on global production as a whole.

EMMANUEL DECAUX, Advisory Committee Expert, said that the current issue they were discussing had become even more urgent since the food crisis had occurred. States had to respect and protect human rights, which included the right to food. The Human Rights Council already had a strong mandate with respect to the right to food. There had also been continuity in the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food. For peasants, it would be very important to look at the existing conventions that applied to them in the United Nations system and to look at which needed to be updated. They should also look at the situation of fishermen, as that was a distinct group. People rummaging through waste bins to look for food was an aberration, but also the fact that peasants themselves sometimes also did not enjoy their right to food. The right to food in prisons should also be looked at; in some countries it was the detainees’ families who had to provide them with food. He also cautioned the Advisory Committee not to propose a new convention every time it looked at an issue.

MONA ZULFICAR, Advisory Committee Expert, stressed that the report presented was not a final report, but a preliminary version, which was still to be commented on by civil society organizations and other groups. The report did not propose at this stage that a convention be drafted in this area, instead suggesting that a full-fledged study be commissioned on the rights of peasants.

LAZARO PARY, in a joint statement on behalf of the Indian Movement TUPAJ AMARU and the World Peace Council, drew attention to the right to food in the context of the present environmental crisis, financial crisis and water crisis. All those crises had shown that riches in the form of capital were highly concentrated in developed countries, and that rural poverty was concentrated in developing countries. Greed should not be considered as a fatality of history, as Malthus had posited. Indigenous people had considered throughout history that mother Earth was generous enough to feed all her people. However, greed had lead to the fact that biofuels were produced to feed machines, rather than children. Speculators, called traders, had been thriving, while poor people had been surviving on less than $2 a day. The great frauds of the century lay with the banking businesses, which committed economic crimes. Giant multinationals had been dominating and controlling production and access to foodstuffs and water, and had been omnipresent in indigenous lands, depriving people of their heritage, and giving it up to the laws of the market. The International Monetary Fund had also continued to impose the neo-liberal model on poor countries, which had torn the world apart. Its recommendations had called for the freeing of prices and the reduction of budgets for health care. Owing to its anti-democratic formula, expressed in the formula “1 vote – 1 dollar”, social justice and the right to food were clearly not goals of that organization. The international community should draft an international code of conduct for multinational companies to address the right to food and the other injustices just mentioned.

HENRI SARAGIH, of Centre Europe – Tiers Monde (CETIM), congratulated the Advisory Committee for establishing the groundwork for the promotion and protection of rights of peasants. Peasants’ rights were fundamental for the world. The food crisis had shown that the world needed to work together in responding to that challenge. The economic system and profit-making of food production were clearly in the picture of the food crisis. More than 1 billion people were undernourished worldwide and the Asia and Pacific region had the largest number of hungry people, followed by sub-Saharan Africa. The Millennium Development Project Task Force on hunger had shown that 80 per cent of the world’s hungry lived in rural areas. With that study, the United Nations had begun to unravel the discrimination against peasants.

DALE AWASIS, in a joint statement on behalf of the Indian Council of South America, the International Council for Human Rights and the Indigenous Peoples and Nations Coalition, said they welcomed the study prepared by the drafting group and were especially pleased to see a specific reference to indigenous peoples in it. Indigenous peoples’ right to food was directly linked to their territory. While the settlers had been in their territory, their lands had been turned into agricultural lands, driving out their traditional foods. They could go to a grocery store; however, the quality of food available to them had led to an epidemic of diabetes among their peoples. The quality of food was critical to the survival of their peoples. Governance over territory was critical to maintain the continued sustenance of food. Indigenous peoples thus had to be fully involved in the decisions related to the use of their territory and they had the right to say no to development or exploitation of their territory. There was a need to have a right to permanent sovereignty over natural resources.

RONALD BARNES, speaking on behalf of the Indian Council of South America, the International Council for Human Rights and the Indigenous Peoples and Nations Coalition, said that they had presented to treaty bodies and to other United Nations Special Procedures the issue of the systematic denial of their right to self-determination by States. The military testing of nuclear devices in the Pacific by the French or testing munitions that contained depleted uranium continued unilaterally without any chance of stopping such practices that led to the destruction of their food resources. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Corporations were also being used to consent to exploitation on the territory and resources without their consent.

GIAN FRANCO FATTORINI, of the Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’amitié entre les Peuples (MRAP), stated that the right to food was the right that was most seriously violated in a profound way. Some 80 per cent of suffering populations in that regard had been peasants, including indigenous populations. In South Africa, the issue had not been properly resolved, as peasants had met resistance by the large landowners. Government policies, such as those related to biofuel production, had also deprived farmers of their resources. The Committee was encouraged to forward the study’s recommendations included in the annex to the Human Rights Council for serious consideration.

JOSE ANTONIO BENGOA CABELLO, Advisory Committee Vice-Chairperson, said it was important to have an exchange of views on the issue of the necessity of creating new conventions or whether declarations were enough when it came to human rights. He realized that the international legal human rights system was in constant evolution and was constantly being built. The role of bodies such as the Advisory Committee was to contribute to that building process. Many subjects and issues remained invisible in societies. If there were no specific references to those issues, those subjects would remain invisible in society. By adopting declarations, many changes had happened in their societies. That was one argument in favour of giving visibility to issues that had remained invisible for a long time. On the other hand, those invisible issues became visible only once situations exploded; just as what had happened in Haiti recently. Haiti had been forgotten by the international community for several years and only now one heard major promises. Several calls were made to erase Haiti’s debt, but it had not yet been erased. Moving towards a convention could thus also be good and the Advisory Committee should not be afraid of proposing preliminary studies that would move towards new conventions.

HALIMA EMBAREK WARZAZI, Advisory Committee Chairperson, warned that the subject had to be brought up in a very cautious way to the Human Rights Council for discussion. It was preferable to proceed slowly but surely with the discussion instead of opt for a hasty and forceful introduction of the issue. The suggestion was put forward to facilitate slow evolution, as in the case of the Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

JEAN ZIEGLER, Advisory Committee Vice-Chairperson, noted that the drafting group had worked really hard on the preliminary report and he hoped that the Council would make good use of that solid body of research. The Advisory Committee should ask the Council to give the Advisory Committee a mandate to continue the study. There was a clear path ahead of them with a clear result.

MONA ZULFICAR, Advisory Committee Expert, thanked all Experts and speakers for their comments and promised to accommodate those comments in the final report. Mr. Ziegler’s proposals were deemed very valuable and were to be taken into high regard and consideration.

DHEERUJLALL SEETULSINGH, Advisory Committee Expert, noted that the report said that the land-grabbing deal between South Korea and Madagascar had ended in the overthrow of the President of Madagascar. That was quite a big statement, and there were no proof for that. He proposed to delete that sentence.

JEAN ZIEGLER, Advisory Committee Vice-Chairperson, noted that the report did not cite the Government of South Korea, but that it had been the multinational Daewoo which had entered in the deal with Madagascar.

For use of the information media; not an official record

AC10/007E