The Right to Food

Because human rights are interdependent, indivisible and interrelated, violating the right to food may impair the enjoyment of other human rights. For example:

• The right to health. Nutrition is a component of both the right to health and the right to food.
• The right to life. When people are not able to feed themselves and face the risk of death by starvation, malnutrition or resulting illnesses, their right to life would also be at stake.
• The right to water. The right to food cannot be realized if people lack access to safe drinking water for personal and domestic uses
• The right to education. Hunger and malnutrition impair children’s learning abilities and may force them to drop out of school and work instead, thus undermining their enjoyment of the right to education.
• The right to information. Information is crucial for the right to food. It enables individuals to know about food and nutrition, markets and the allocation of resources.
• Freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Deprivation of adequate food in prison or other forms of detention may constitute torture or inhuman and degrading treatment.

State Obligations

State obligations in relation to the right to food fall into three categories: to respect, protect and fulfill that right.

States have to respect people’s existing access to food and means of obtaining food. This means that any measure resulting in preventing access to food (for example denying food assistance to political opponents) is prohibited. States should ensure that public institutions, including state-run enterprises or the military, do not undermine people’s access to food by, for example, forced evictions or contaminating or destroying farmland.

States have to protect individuals’ enjoyment of the right to food against violations. For example, governments should prevent third parties from destroying sources of food by, for instance, polluting land, water. and air with hazardous industrial or agricultural products or destroying the ancestral lands of indigenous peoples to clear the way for mines, dams, highways, or industrial agriculture

The obligation to fulfill includes both an obligation to facilitate and an obligation to provide. The States must be proactive in facilitating people’s access to and use of resources and means of ensuring their livelihoods. Typical measures include the implementation of agrarian reform programs or minimum income regulations. Whenever individuals or groups are unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right to food by the means at their disposal, governments have the obligation to fulfill (provide) it, for example by providing food assistance or ensuring social safety nets for the most deprived and for victims of natural or other disasters.

Related Human Rights Instruments:

• International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1. OHCHR Fact Sheet No. 16 (Rev.1): The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
2. [2] FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2001 (Rome, 2001).