The Campaign News
EHHR campaign to be highlighted at UN General Assembly
This last weekend, the Elders gathered a group greater than two hundred strong at La Maison Des Arts et Métiers in Paris to reflect on the last year of Every Human Has Rights. They stood alongside more than 30 award-winning human rights journalists, civil society leaders, and government and business leaders to amplify the voices of millions of people around the world; re-committing themselves to the goals of the Universal Declaration and calling on governments and individuals everywhere to renew their commitment to human rights.
On Wednesday, 10 December - the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Mary Robinson will highlight messages from Paris and the individual pledges and group commitments made throughout the campaign in an address to world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
'The Human Right to Food and the Global Food Crisis'
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Archived footage of the UN Event: 'The Human Right to Food
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On August 29th, some of the human rights world’s leading voices, working toward solutions to the global food crisis, gathered at the United Nations to discuss the root causes and responses to the global food crisis, and the human right to food
With recent increases in food prices pushing the number of people living without food security to as high as 1.7 billion people, the need for a human rights-based approach to understanding the root causes of (and solutions to) the food crisis has never been more pressing.
In his introductory remarks, Ngonlardje Mbaidjol of the OHCHR, who moderated the event, said: “The human rights dimension of the food crisis is the one that speaks with the voices of the poor and marginalized; and that empowers them to seek the fulfillment of their rights, and the right to food in particular, from states and other duty bearers.”
Mbaidjol said that of the many high profile efforts to address the food crisis over the last 6 months, very few that included the human rights perspective. His hope for the afternoon's discussion was to: “…openly and frankly examine if the right to food and the human rights based approach would lead us to a different analysis of the underlying root causes of the crisis, and then after, to devising more [efficacious] and just responses that allow human beings, from different parts of the world, to live a life of dignity and freedom from want – as the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights envisaged in 1948.”
Oliver De Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, emphasized the need to turn away from ready-made solutions to food production increases, which pay insufficient attention to the social and environmental dimensions of the crisis. Instead, he pointed to efforts that would help the small scale & local farmers, who constitute the majority of those who are hungry. De Schutter suggested that by applying a human rights framework to policies shaping the global food chain, we would develop better targeted solutions, more sustainably addressing the needs of those who are now hungry and malnourished.
Heather Grady, of Realizing Rights, put the failure of emphasizing the human rights aspect of the food crisis into the context of the broader failure to embed human rights standards and principles into international development discourse and practice. Grady's comments echoed that of De Schutter's, stating that: "First, a human rights approach to food security starts with mapping the problem to identify who are most vulnerable, and targeting the solutions to them. And second, that this is not about the amount of food produced, but far more about the power of those who produce food, the purchasing power of the poor, and about access to food."
Karen Hansen-Kuhn, of Action Aid, agreed with speakers like Flavio Valente, of FIAN International, who said that the core of the problem has it's roots in the structural adjustment programs and aggressive trade liberalization driven by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Association, dating back decades. Hansen-Kuhn suggested that many of these policy choices have stripped smaller-scale farmers of the tools they need to defend their livelihoods, and feed their families and their nations.The event also included Themba Masuku of FAO; Joia Mukharjee of Partners In Health; and Sanjay Reddy of Columbia University.
Each participant took time to share their perspective on the causes of the global food crisis, and the solutions they propose as part of a more effective and human rights-based approach to achieving food security for the more than 1 billion people currently living without.
You can watch the whole event by pressing play on the video player embedded in this news-post or by visiting the UN Video Archive website; and you can learn more about the right to food at campaign's 'The Right to Freedom from Hunger' theme page.
Friday: Live web-cast discussion on Right to Food
 Aerial art demanding world leaders take action on the global food crisis in July. |
Throughout the year, global citizen's have called on world leaders to take action to address the global food crisis. Yet a multitude of high level meetings, from the Rome Conference on World Food Security to the UN General Assembly meeting and G-8 Summit this July, have failed to address the crisis from a human rights perspective. People around the world continue to bear the burden of rising food costs; while root causes of the crisis remain unaddressed.
This Friday, from 3-6pm New York Time (starting at 19:00 GMT), Every Human Has Rights partners ActionAid with Karen Hansen-Kuhn and Realizing Rights with Heather Grady, join the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, and others to discuss a human rights approach to ending the food crisis. The event is titled 'The Human Right to Food and the Global Food Crisis: Root Causes and Responses'.
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Panelists will address the global food crisis and its roots; the right to food and policy choices; accountability and remedies for violations to the right to food; progress and challenges ahead; and the role of international trade regimes and international human rights law.
In case you miss it, we will post a recap of the event on the 'Campaign News' section of everyhumanhasrights.org; but we hope you can join us live for this important discussion on the right to food.
Learn more about the right to food at our 'Right to Freedom from Hunger' Theme Page.
Elders join HungerFREE demanding action
Elders join HungerFREE to demand urgent action on global food crisis Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and other Elders joined forces with ActionAid’s HungerFREE campaign last night to continue the fight against the global food crisis.
At an event in Johannesburg the Elders – joined by ActionAid chief executive Ramesh Singh - called on governments around the world to do more to tackle the crisis.
Elders chairman Desmond Tutu described the right to food as "fundamental."
"We have it in us to make this a better world, a caring world, a compassionate world in which everyone would enjoy the right to food and freedom from hunger," he said.
The former Archbishop of Capetown, rose to his feet and applauded – bringing the whole room with him - after an impassioned speech by Activista South Africa spokesperson Salamina Motsoagae.
Kofi Anan, the former UN secretary general, called on governments to do more to help small scale farmers, especially women. He also said banks should extend loans to smallholders so they could grow more food.
He added that countries needed to improve rural infrastructure, develop better seeds and improve soil in Africa, "the only continent that cannot feed itself."
Mary Robinson, the former first female president of Ireland, said it was an outrage that people were still going hungry when there was enough food in the world to feed everyone.
“One child dies every five seconds from hunger-related causes and, despite doing the bulk of the work to grow and feed their families, women go hungry the most, accounting for sixty per cent of the world’s hungry people. And all this happens when there is enough food in the world to feed everybody.”
ActionAid chief executive Ramesh Singh called for urgent action to be taken to end the current food crisis.“ActionAid has joined forces with the Elders to make sure that everyone can secure their most fundamental human right – the right to food,” he said.
“In a world of plenty, it is a crime that people still die of hunger. We are calling for urgent action to end the global food crisis.”
Learn more about ActionAid's HungerFREE campaign at ActionAid.org and on the Every Human Has Rights 'The Right to Freedom From Hunger' theme page.
Freedom from Hunger - Aerial Art
As the Every Human Has Rights campaign spends July focused on The Right to Freedom from Hunger, we have the privilege of reporting on a collaboration between two of our campaign partners that resulted in one of the most beautiful calls to action on the global food crisis we've seen to date.
Circle Up Now partnered with ActionAid to coordinate a giant human aerial art piece depicting Nelson Mandela with his fist raised high, and the message "Freedom From Hunger". This grand 'human' call to action was literally made up of 2,200 students from the Alexandra Township, in Johannesburg, South Africa, who wore colored t-shirts and sat in formation to create the image.
ActionAid South Africa Country Director Zanele Twala called Mandela one of the most outspoken leaders on the eradication of global hunger. The image of Mandela was also meant to pay tribute to The Elders' founder, on his 90th birthday, July 18th of this year.
“On his 90th birthday, the youth of South Africa are celebrating this great milestone by reminding global leaders that people around the world are experiencing insufferable hunger and we need an urgent resolution to the current food crisis,” said Twala.
According to a report of the event on ActionAid's website, "As part of its HungerFREE campaign, ActionAid is taking action on Mandela’s birthday as an opportunity to create hope for a HungerFREE world by reiterating the vision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – that hunger will be eradicated when all states respect, protect and fulfil the basic human right to food"
Students were choreographed by John Quigley of ‘Circle Up Now’ in collaboration with local artist Mthunzi Ndimande.
