The Cordoba Declaration on the Right to Food

Launched on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this Declaration presents a number of issues and recommendations that should be given attention in further work dealing with chronic hunger and the aggravation of the food crisis, as identified by a group of experts in the context of the Cordoba process.[1] The present Declaration demonstrates how the right to food can tackle the structural causes of hunger and contribute to food security for all.

Full Title: The Cordoba Declaration on the Right to Food and the Governance of the Global Food and Agricultural Systems

1. Preamble

The dramatic scope of the world hunger has now become fully recognised. Widespread hunger riots and social unrest has at long last made it obvious to the public and to governments that this unacceptable failure of the global civilisation can no longer be allowed to fester much more. It is now abundantly clear that conventional approaches to food security have failed.

The Members of the United Nations declared in 1948 that everyone has a right to be free from hunger and to adequate food including drinking water, as set out in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This commitment was given legally binding form in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It is implicit also in the right to life as contained in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The right to an adequate standard of living including food is also found in Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is implicit in its Article 24.

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has in its General Comment 12 (adopted in 1999) clarified the nature of state obligations to implement the right to food, and has in its General Comment 15 (2002) made a similar clarification regarding the right to drinking water.

States have repeatedly reiterated the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger and the right to adequate food. World leaders and their representatives stated in 1996 in their Rome Declaration on World Food Security: "We consider it intolerable that more than 800 million people throughout the world, and particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. This situation is unacceptable'.

The participating states therefore committed themselves to implement policies aimed at eradicating poverty and inequality and improving physical and economic access by all to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe food, and they pledged themselves to eradicate hunger in all countries, specifically by reducing the number of undernourished people by 2015 to half their level in 1996.

If implemented, this would have meant that by this point in time (end 2008) the number should have decreased to some 583 million hungry people. The contrary has happened -- the number of hungry has increased over its 1996 number and is now at the incredibly high number of 967 million.

A similar commitment to reduce the share to a half by 2015 of the world population who go hungry was also made at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, and is included in Millennium Development Goal 1, also reiterated by the 2005 Summit outcome document. But it was clear even before the present financial crisis that the target would not be reached, if conventional approaches were continued. Nor have more recent commitments made at the highest level on food and agricultural policies (Plan of Implementation adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002), led to the re- design of the policies, and much less to their implementation.

In 2004, through the FAO Council, world governments adopted the Voluntary guidelines to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security. If these guidelines are followed with conscience and commitment, developments are likely to take a different turn.

The current hunger crisis is not a time-restricted famine but the sudden worsening of a chronic problem that has affected hundreds of million people for decades. Hunger is a structural problem and therefore demands structural changes, with consequences for institutional development and food system governance. Food security for all must be considered as a global public good and it must be made a central focus of global governance as well as of national development, taking into account that often the main problem is not too little food production but the inability of many to have access to food.

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