International Institutions & the Right to Food
Moderator: Nadia Lambek ’10, Yale Law School
Panelists: Marc Edelman, Hunter College (CUNY); Smita Narula, New York University Law School; Flavio Valente, FIAN International
Liveblogged by: Margaret Hsieh & Paul Linden-Retek
Lambek (1:55 PM): reiterated that she, unfortunately, is not Jim Silk, who could not attend as moderator. Panel will address a variety of issues concerning international institutions and food policy.
Narula (2:00 PM): Will focus on the right to food under international human rights law and the interaction of international institutions. Previous panel speakers have cautioned against pushing policies that may undermine right to food rather than alleviate structural problems we face. Food crisis has revealed paucity of legal framework but also has breathed life to the problem. I will speak about how exactly to reclaim the right to food.
1. Clarify goals
Under international human rights law, the right to food is first the freedom from hunger but then also the right to adequate food (availability, nature of the food, and accessibility)
Food sovereignty rather than food security–the right to decide.
Issues of equality: equitable distribution of food (part of the right to food is an obligation of states to make food accessible without discrimination)
2. Mapping the framework of international human rights law
States have obligations to individuals for the fulfillment of economic, social and cultural rights, of which the right to food is a part: Respect, Protect, and Fulfill.
Problems with this model: enforcement, of course, but also global actors interfering and undermining the right to food (IMF, World Bank and forced liberalizations of economies; WTO and unequal balance of trading rules; transnational corporations and multinational agrobusiness); lead state actors and the Doha round.
3. Address some of doctrinal challenges for making framework more robust
In international human rights law, we have focused so much on the direct state actions and obligations toward citizens, but have ignored the above factors which have “impact without obligation”. The key is to introduce obligation into the above framework of impacting institutions. For example, lead states should play a more active role in structuring WTO or IMF agreements and regulate transnational corporations with the right to food specifically in mind.
Respect and Protect in the right to food are the prongs most neglected: Food aid by itself doesn’t sufficiently address structural challenges. This is where social movements can come in and find commonality across communities. We need to also reintroduce issues of agency and dignity into conversations on right to food.
Valente ( 2:15 PM) – 5 issues: struggle, power, tools, obligation, governance
Reminds us that this is a struggle over millennia between the powerless and the powerful. This is what human rights is about, about a social pact and a concrete struggle. We must respect that this is what is behind human rights. Human rights were built by huge social movements: French and American revolutions and the upheavals of the Second World War. These agreements were signed not in the name of states but in the name of peoples. Human rights consists on limits on the state and obligations of the state to reduce abuses, inequities, and injustices. Social organizations and movements are the motor of this endeavor and the human rights framework only presents tools for broader popular action. The right to feed oneself is a prerequisite for other rights. “There is no conditionality here.“
I have heard a misconception here today about what politics is about. Quoted Brazilian sociologist: “There are those who say that there is no food policy in Brazil are wrong. There is. It is a policy of hunger.” Hunger is not an accident but the consequence of political decisions and political forces serving other interests.
Let’s create a multi-stakeholder space, instead of a space that includes the IMF and World Bank while ignoring human rights interests. Global Partnership, to be created by the UN, would include other world institutions. Sees this as an effort to water down governmental obligations, and social movements have reacted against this. It is important to reintroduce governance back into the picture. We need a space (FAO) to speak about food security, where governments can be held to one mandate and not other interests. Reform of CFS (Committee on Food Security) is of primary importance. Civil society should have the ability to speak on the same level as governments, but without a vote. It is important that the decision ultimately be made by governments under a framework of accountability of civil society. But the responsibility should be attached to governance.
Edelman ( 2:30 PM) – Peasants’ Rights and the UN System
1) Expansion of normative idea of human rights. Rights once considered inconceivable are now legitimate or at least open for discussion.
2) Formation of forms of collaborative governance between state and non-state actors.
3) Transnational global movements and new conceptions of rights. Transnational agrarian movements following footsteps of indigenous movements.
4) New normative concepts that have come out of grassroots social movements and entered mainstream discussion: food sovereignty, precautionary principles, etc.
Peasants’ Rights Convention Proposal. Some of the rights claimed include: Right to life and an adequate standard of living, freedom od association, opinion, and expression, right to have access to justice, right to seeds and traditional agricultural knowledge, right to capital and means of agricultural production, right to information, right to environmental presevation, self-governance in their own “territories,” “free, prior informed consent” for projects affecting them, etc.
Future prospects for the ICRP. Western states deployed the liberal argument against collective/community rights, arguing that only individual could hold rights. However, regional groupings may be favorable to a peasants’ rights framework. Two other issues are likely to be major points of contention: right to land, right to reject (mono-crop practices, GMOs, etc.). Right to reject: builds on the idea of the right to free, prior, and informed consent. A hegemonic conception of rights in dominant UN states focuses on notion of individual market actors. Defining peasants as legal right-bearers may be difficult. Proponents of ICRP have made notable advances in recent months.
Audience Q ( 2:45: PM) –
Q1: ILO Convention. In many ways, it was easy for states to accept this convention, because it dealt with small, exoticized groups. Problems arise when goals of indigenous groups conflict with those of mainstream society (e.g., re. petroleum). The possibility for conflicts is even large when it comes to peasants, in contrast with indigenous groups. How do you change the consciousness of the population at large so they see their interests as being aligned with, rather than opposed to, peasants’ interests.
A1 (Edelman): The agenda of the peasants’ rights convention is very ambitious. It embodies a struggle between models, although it doesn’t use that language — implication of contention over political and economic power. Edelman is not optimistic about acceptance of the ideas advanced in the convention — for example, the right to reject. In every society, there is conflict between urban and rural areas, etc. Such conflicts are resolved through political contention. Building political consensus is immensely challenging, especially is societies that have urbanized quickly — there, peasants are relegated to margins of society.
A2 (Valente): “We don’t have answers — that’s the thing.” Quotes Marx. There are no more places for people to live to. Prioritization of ecological rights over human rights. Human rights instruments have the role of bringing visibility to human suffering, and to bring relevant discussions to the mainstream. The human rights movements isn’t limited to peasants. What do we want for the world? An agricultural model that destroys the climate, etc., or a more sustainable model of production that includes the people and makes it possible to lead a dignified existence in the countryside? To feed the world today, we need more farmers, not less. Industry has benefited from low cost food and wages, which allows for quick profits (at the expense of rural farmers and people). We are subsidizing the profits of international corporations. This needs to be made clear. Unfortunately, this is not discussed. The Convention is not a solution, but a means of increasing visibility to the problems.
A1 (Narula). Human rights provide tools for influencing the discussion around normative problems. Decisions that have been made are not accidental — the current arrangements in global agriculture serve particular interests. In the wake of all these recent crises, a consistent message is that states need to work together and guarantee a right to food. But there is no attachment of language of responsibility of other actors, who are merely called upon to cooperate in good faith. Ultimately, we are talking about power structures, and to change these, we need to begin a conversation. There’s a global south and global north within each country; not just the larger Global North v. Global South. First step is to recognize that the dichotomies are not so simple.
Q2: Two levels for change: current global regime, enforcement of the global regime. We have created a lot of conflicting global regimes. There is food productivity stagnation in many countries. How can we come up with a green revolution to improve food productivity? All technological advances would be coming from the private sector, where there are restrictions do to patent law.
Q3: In discussing the question of how can we convince the public that peasants’ rights is something worth fighting for, we have overlooked the “urban bias.” Improving the participation of farmers in public decisionmaking is the single most important expression of peasants’ rights today, and can help to balance against the urban bias. In addition, urban populations have a strong interest in conditions improving for farmers — or else there will be continual urban flight even when there is a lack of jobs in industry in the cities. The urban-rural divide is something that we should look at more carefully.
Q4: “Here we are, in the uber-dominant state.” The US is the originator of the model of industrial agriculture that has spread around the world and caused many of the problems that we are talking about. There is a global food security initiative within the Obama administration. What can we do domestically to address these issues?
A4 (Valente): Very little has changed in the international setting from the American position, at least on the big issues. There have been some signs of change: One, Americans have signed the document without putting in a footnote that they are opposed to the right to food. However, the most important movement that has not happened: a global framework made by all the governments (justification: each country needs to have its own policy). Country-led national food security plans are dominant today. But how can these work when there is a large global structure in which the players are not equal? From a human rights perspective, it is interesting to see the contradictions in the US with economic and social rights — this has been kept under the rug for a long time. But Obama has made some interesting remarks about the right of people to feed themselves. There is a strong grassroots movement in national food security. Things will not just change from top down.
A4 (Narula): There are several initiatives US citizens can get behind. Push for the ratification of the ICCPR. There would probably be very strong resistance, but that doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be pushed for. There is more room for enforcement here than in other countries. Also, there are specific proposals about how the US can regulate corporations — agribusinesses, etc., buyers v.s. sellers, regulating IP rights in order to make sure these are in service of the right to food. The US, as dominant state, can influence international food policy. We can favor a more level playing field but have not started trying to do so. Regulating the activities of corporations have lots of traction.
Q5: Global food movement. Progress: recognition that you don’t contribute to food security by merely feeding people (aid, cheap prices, etc.); must support countries in feeding themselves. Major problem: ag development still seen as unilateral development; idea that Global South will follow the Global North (not moving toward more democratic food systems). This may simply be because we don’t understand there are other ways to support agricultural development. In addition, ecological approaches are not well understood by decisionmakers. Fewer profits are made to teach farmers to learn how to use local inputs, etc. (cheaper to just provide them with seeds).
Q6: Alternative mechanisms for regulating models that are produced in universities regarding the right to food or food sovereignty?
A6: In Brazil, there is strong demand for education in agri-ecology. There is the problem of criminalization of small movements. E.g., small agri-ecology projects that are being brought to court.
A7: Agri-economy curricula in universities. To change these involve changing many other aspects of agricultural. E.g., there are laws in many places against using non-certified seeds. Agri-ecology would presumably involve using such seeds (and other practices) that are currently legally prohibited (current legal prohibitions favor large agri-institutions).
Q7: Food Security Act that is moving through countries — mentions GMOs. Many groups have opposed the mention of GMO technology.
Marc Edelman is Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Hunter College, CUNY. Professor Edelman has pursued extensive anthropological studies concerning the role of peasants in globalization, and he has published widely on changing land tenure and land use patterns, production systems, rural class relations, and social movements in Central America. Currently, he is completing a book on peasant involvement in global civil society movements and transnational networking among small farmer organizations. He has served on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including American Anthropologist, Journal of Agrarian Change, and Studies in Comparative International Development.
Smita Narula is a clinical professor at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU. She is an advisor to the special rapporteur on food, and author of The Right to Food: Holding Global Actors Accountable Under International Law, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 44 (2006). Previously, she spent six years at Human Rights Watch, first as the organization’s India researcher and later as Senior Researcher for South Asia. She has also worked for UNICEF and UNDP. Before graduating from Harvard Law School, Narula received a Masters in International Development from Brown University.
Flavio Valente is the Secretary General of FIAN International, an global civil society organization that has advocated for the realization of the right to food for more than 20 years. FIAN consists of national sections and individual members in over 50 countries around the world, and has consultative status to the United Nations. From 2002 to 2007, Mr. Valente was the Brazilian National Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Adequate Food, Water and Rural Land. He was for many years the Technical coordinator of ABRANDH (Brazilian Action for Nutrition and Human Rights) a Civil Society organization linked to the World Alliance for Nutrition and Human Rights (WANAHR), and since 1998, a member of the coordination of the Brazilian Forum for Food and Nutritional Security (FBSAN).
