Food for a hare's thought
-------------------------
Human Rights Reader 46
STEPPING INTO THE NEW AGE OF THE RIGHT TO ADEQUATE NUTRITION: SNAIL
PACE PROGRESS?
The Situation:
1. One of the key questions perhaps not yet clearly answered in nu-
trition circles is: Why is the commitment of nutrition professionals
to a Human Rights approach, although sorely needed, still not a real-
ity?
2. Such a commitment was and is seen as needed as our reaction with
the best chance for success to counter the increasingly perceived
(and additive) negative impacts of the relentless process of Global-
ization. Globalization is creating and is accelerating poverty --most
often with malnutrition as an accompanying outcome. This, at the same
time that the negative effects of Globalization are creating growing
disparities, exclusion, unemployment, marginalization, alienation,
environmental degradation, exploitation, corruption, violence and
conflict, all --in one way or another-- impinging on nutrition.
3. People who are being marginalized by Globalization today are
really being pushed to the limit and they do need to channel their
frustrations into positive action. But in real terms, the poor are
still being offered top-down social services and thus are not really
active claimants when it comes to ensuring their perceived needs are
met. So the Human Rights approach comes to introduce or reinforce a
crucial missing element in development work, i.e., people forcefully
demanding de-facto accountability; and this is its added value in all
work being done in the area of nutrition. One wonders why the ap-
proach has not generated more enthusiasm.
4. Because the rights-based approach takes the entitlements of those
being marginalized as its starting point, to be sustainable, it must
be based on equity. Human Rights and equity go hand in hand. The
rights-based approach thus focuses on the basic and structural (mac-
roeconomic) causes of poverty, the main determinant of ill-health and
malnutrition.
5. Historically, there has been much circularity in the discussion of
Human Rights. There is still a segment of the Human Rights community
that thinks that one can settle world order issues without settling
the power issues still slanted against the welfare of the majority of
the marginalized. But this is almost a contradiction. In this day and
age, more concrete actions directly empowering the poor need to be
identified and indeed carried out.
6. The worldwide halving of malnutrition rates by 2015 will simply
not be achieved through the piling up of yet more 'benevolent'
changes centered around Free Market solutions carried out by those
who, through their power, control it. We are being sold a utopia, one
that extols the ultimate benefits of Globalization. This utopia is
made of a similar, but dangerous mythical belief that ultimately a
global free market will cater to everybody's needs and make everybody
happy. How much nutrition professionals are influenced by this myth
has never been assessed.
7. Be it as it may, the Human Rights approach is here to set limits
to the vicissitudes and sways of the (socially insensitive) market.
The Challenge: what now has to change
8. Because of the gross flaws of Globalization, particularly in the
social realm, a more humane global governance is now needed --more
than ever.
9. It is a fallacy to focus on whether Globalization OR bad govern-
ments is the most important cause of Human Rights violations. The Hu-
man Rights approach shows us what states should do or should not do.
When they fail the test, many governments actually use the Globaliza-
tion argument --of being victims of a global process-- as an excuse
for stalling and not implementing their obligations.
10. But, in fact, in the implementation of rights, one more often
finds considerable softness in the commitment of the governments
themselves. Often, a rights-based approach is not even on their radar
screens. So both the individual duty bearers, as well as the system,
are to blame and to indeed be held accountable.
11. For all governments (in rich and in poor countries), how much of
their general budgets they devote to nutrition, to health, to food
security, to education and to poverty alleviation is indeed of sub-
stantive Human Rights concern. Further, one should look at how the
various existing expenditures are distributed among the various
socio-economic population groups. Governments do violate Human Rights
when they fail to offer adequate and participatory health and nutri-
tion services to the poor.
12. To take a very real and current issue as an example, should the
provision of such services be privately organized, governments still
remain responsible for the egalitarian and adequate provision of the
same. But, are they? They most often are not; one just needs to look
at the existing evidence to see that. Civil society watchdog groups
should be monitoring these developments and denouncing its shortcom-
ings more proactively.
13. A Human Rights-focused analysis of statistical data should exam-
ine the extent to which various expenditures in nutrition and other
social services are distributed among the diverse socio-economic
groups according to need. The same watchdog groups have a role in
scrutinizing the actions funded to make sure they 'respect, protect
and fulfill' the Human Rights of the poorest --and they should pro-
test if that is not the case. In so doing, they will actually be ad-
dressing the whole gamut of government Human Rights violations.
14. But are governments the sole holders of Human Rights duties? Le-
gally, the answer is yes (they are the actual signatories of the re-
spective Covenants). But, in reality, there are indeed other duty
bearers.
15. The example of children as rights holders helps us illustrate
this point: The duty bearers of children's rights are, first and
foremost, the immediate care-giver (the mother or other), followed by
the family/household members, the community and neighbors, local,
sub-national, national and international institutions --all linked in
a web of complementary duty bearers. The case of nutrition and the
responsibility of its professionals could not be more illustrative in
this regard: Together with empowered community leaders, they need to
seek effective duty bearers' responses at all these levels.
16. But this is the theory. The challenge right now is to convert
these concepts into working programs, where people's claims are more
forcefully exerted as their inalienable right.
The Right to adequate Nutrition:
[Preamble: Human Rights concepts applied to nutrition have evolved in
the last 20 years. Early thinkers in this area began talking of an
inalienable 'right to food' of all human beings. But after the world-
wide adoption of the UNICEF-proposed conceptual framework of the
causes of malnutrition, it became clear that food security was only
one element of nutritional wellbeing. This lead to the coining of the
concept of the 'right to nutrition' (here emphasized as the right to
adequate nutrition) which addresses all determinants of said concep-
tual framework. Not surprisingly, this led others to pursue yet a
more ambitious 'right to development' goal. But the latter has en-
countered powerful detractors in the ranks of the developed coun-
tries, particularly the US. In the same vein, it has to be said that
the overall US views on Human Rights differ substantially from much
of the rest of the world: To successive US administrations, civil and
political rights somehow carry more weight than economic, social and
cultural rights. The US particularly objects to the responsibilities
the developed countries bear in relation to the rich countries hav-
ing, for long, infringed the economic and social rights of developing
countries].
17. Although the recognition of the fundamental right to adequate nu-
trition of all humanity is the ethical and political basis of the
overall approach nutrition professionals should embrace, really un-
derstanding this right has largely, so far, been confined to Human
Rights institutions, especially the UN agencies. How much should/can
one rely on these agencies then to be instrumental in shifting the
focus of current and upcoming nutrition programs to a Human Rights
focus? For the time being, perhaps quite a bit. This serious gap sim-
ply needs to be bridged as soon as possible --and this is the purpose
of this Reader.
18. The first challenge will be to help create a common language to
be shared by agencies, governments, NGOs and beneficiaries --a lan-
guage primarily based on social commitments to Human Rights and on
raising the level of responsibility of the different actors (both as
more active claim holders and as more responsive duty bearers). 19.
The second challenge is to make the Human Rights approach concrete
and give it substance (the how)...and the field of nutrition is, for
sure, an inescapable candidate.
20. Unfortunately, as of now, most governments fear that the recogni-
tion of this right to adequate nutrition would interfere with their
current policy choices. They need to be appeased about this fear and
made to understand that certain aspects of the rights approach may be
subject to progressive (gradual) realization. But they also need to
be made to understand that there is a minimum core of rights that all
states simply have to uphold! In the case under discussion here,
states have already signed Covenants that guarantee the respect of
the right to adequate nutrition under any circumstance, irrespective
of the magnitude of the resources available to them.
21. In concrete terms, what this means to nutrition professionals is
that, as soon as possible, Human Rights objectives in nutrition need
to be better singled out, defined and refined to more explicitly es-
tablish specific local action priorities. The right to adequate nu-
trition has yet to acquire a more operational meaning for people as
well, and that is a major political responsibility all nutrition pro-
fessionals have to deal with now.
22. Put another way, in operational terms, effectively mainstreaming
Human Rights in all nutrition activities remains a challenge of enor-
mous dimensions --and the challenge is a political one. Certainly,
operationalizing the right to adequate nutrition is a priority called
for to quicken the current snail's pace; the main challenge here
though is to, first, achieve consensus among nutrition actors on such
an operationalization.
(to be continued in part 2 of 2)
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn
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