Credits: MrsJacqueline, Pixabay.com
This submission has been posted as part of a blog series that seeks to profile the newly created NNHRR Working Group on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights blog series, its vision and plans, and to highlight the expertise of its members, showcasing their research and/or contributions to ESCR.
By: Otto Spijkers
Hunger in the World
In 2015, all Member States of the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2, “Zero Hunger”, with this ambitious target:
“By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.”
How are we progressing toward this goal? The journey has been challenging. According to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024:
“The world is still far off track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, Zero Hunger, with the global prevalence of undernourishment persisting at nearly the same level for three consecutive years after having risen sharply in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 713 and 757 million people may have faced hunger in 2023 - one out of 11 people in the world, and one out of every five in Africa. Hunger is still on the rise in Africa, but it has remained relatively unchanged in Asia, while notable progress has been made in the Latin American and Caribbean region.”
Recent hunger crises, such as the worsening food insecurity in Gaza, have added even more urgency to the global fight against hunger. It has been suggested that States can best tackle the current hunger crisis through a human rights-based approach, with the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to be free from hunger, as proclaimed in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as international legal foundation.
In this post, I aim to explore how international legal frameworks, including human rights law, can help tackle this critical global challenge. My reflections in this post are inspired by a course I taught at Leiden University College on SDGs, Human Rights and International Law, offered annually in October-December as part of an interdisciplinary Minor on Sustainability, Climate Change and Food. This post is part of the blog series highlighting the creation of our new Working Group on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR) within the NNHRR.
Too Little Food, or Unequal Access to Food?
To address the hunger crisis effectively, we first need to understand its root causes. Anne Saab highlights two contrasting narratives:
“Two prevailing and seemingly contradictory narratives on hunger are identified […]: the dominant neoliberal narrative that focuses on increasing food production and the oppositional and aspirational food sovereignty narrative that emphasizes access to and distribution of food.”
The dominant neoliberal narrative argues that hunger primarily results from insufficient food production, suggesting the solution essentially lies in growing more food, with relatively little attention paid to issues relating to equitable distribution and access. The Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development have advocated since their establishment that significantly more food needs to be produced to feed the world in the future (see e.g., here and here).
In contrast, the food sovereignty narrative emphasizes that hunger stems primarily from unequal access and distribution, asserting that increasing food production alone cannot solve the problem. The recent book by Matthew C. Canfield, Translating Food Sovereignty: Cultivating Justice in an Age of Transnational Governance, is a good illustration.
The way we frame the hunger-problem profoundly shapes the strategies we employ to combat it. Many experts say that simply producing more food is not enough, as hunger is fundamentally a problem of access and poverty, not of global food shortages. Amartya Sen expressed this succinctly already in a very famous essay on Poverty and Famines of 1981:
“Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.”
Building on this idea, Matthew Canfield recently observed:
“Academics and civil society organizations have long sought to shift away from the dominant focus on food production and productivist solutions, calling instead for greater integration of the diverse elements and activities connecting production, processing, distribution, preparation, consumption and disposal of food.”
The main problem is that the entire food chain – from production, processing, distribution, preparation, to consumption and disposal of food – is controlled by a limited group of large and very powerful multinational corporations, sometimes referred to as the Food Barons. The “food sovereignty” movement seeks to give control back to the local farmers, the local markets, and the local consumers.
The Role of International Law
International law plays a significant role in addressing hunger and can support both narratives. First, it has been used to bolster the dominant neoliberal narrative, which prioritizes increasing food production through technological means as the solution to global hunger. As mentioned above, international organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development were established, in part, to advance this approach, particularly at the time of their creation.
At the same time, international law has been a powerful tool for challenging this narrative and promoting the idea that hunger is fundamentally an issue of access and equitable distribution. This perspective views hunger as primarily a political challenge rather than a technical one. When applied in this way, international law has the potential to be transformative - emancipatory, even revolutionary. This is particularly evident in areas like international human rights, humanitarian, and criminal law, which are discussed in turn below.
Access to Food under International Human Rights Law
International human rights law stands out as one of the most robust legal frameworks for supporting the second narrative, although one must admit there are traces of the first narrative in it as well. Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) provides the cornerstone for the right to food, stating:
“1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food […]
2. The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:
(a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;
(b) Taking into account the problem of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.”
Article 11 is complemented by other human rights provisions. Other social rights, like the right to health and the right to water, are closely linked, as are some civil and political rights, such as the right to life and freedom from torture. The prohibition of discrimination also underscores the importance of ensuring equitable access to food for all. Additionally, treaties protecting particularly vulnerable groups explicitly address access to food, such as Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on an adequate standard of living, and Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health.
Together, these provisions establish access to food as an internationally recognized right. As early as 1999, the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights defined this right in its General Comment No. 12 On The Right To Adequate Food:
“The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.”
The Committee identified the core content of this right as:
“The availability of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, free from adverse substances, and acceptable within a given culture [and] the accessibility of such food in ways that are sustainable and that do not interfere with the enjoyment of other human rights.”
Building on this understanding of the right, and updating it to take into account recent developments in our understanding of the relevant international law as well as the adoption of the SDGs, Michael Fakhri, the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, offered a more comprehensive definition:
“The right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access - either directly or by means of financial purchases - to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear.”
This evolving understanding of the right to food - moving further and further away from the first and closer and closer to the second narrative - highlights its transformative potential. By addressing access, equity, and sustainability, international law provides a foundation for tackling hunger as a human rights challenge, and for envisioning a world where everyone has equitable access to food and can live in dignity, free from hunger.
Access to Food under International Humanitarian and Criminal Law
Ensuring equitable access to food is not only a human right but also a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law. It protects objects indispensable to civilian survival, such as “foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works”, by prohibiting their destruction during armed conflict. Additionally, parties to an armed conflict are obligated to allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian relief, including food, to civilians in need. While parties to an armed conflict may implement measures to ensure their own security, they cannot completely deny relief efforts to civilians in need. The arbitrary withholding of consent to the supply of humanitarian relief is clearly unlawful. Once such consent has been given, the actual delivery of humanitarian relief, including food, must be facilitated.
Most critically, international humanitarian law prohibits the starvation of civilian populations as a method of warfare. Starvation is understood as deliberately depriving civilian persons of food. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is recognized as a war crime (art. 8(2)b, xxv); and the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population, is seen as extermination, being a crime against humanity (art. 7(1)b jo art. 7(2)b). For an overview of legal precedent, see the Starvation Jurisprudence Digest, last updated 31 January 2023.
It is worth emphasising, finally, that these obligations under international humanitarian law complement rather than replace the rules under international human rights law, which were discussed above. In other words, the human right to food applies both in times of war and in times of peace.
An Example: Access to Food in Gaza
Recent reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food have focused on the dire situation in Gaza. One of his latest reports highlights the link between starvation and the right to food, with an emphasis on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty. Similarly, the latest report of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, raises serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including starvation as a weapon of war (see paragraphs 21-32 of the report).
Additionally, in May 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed applications for warrants of arrest before the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber. The Prosecutor accused Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, inter alia, of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. In November of last year, the Chamber issued the requested warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, with some modifications. The Chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.
Conclusion
Ending hunger by 2030 requires more than increasing food production - it demands equitable distribution to ensure food reaches those in vulnerable situations, such as civilians trapped in armed conflict. International legal frameworks, particularly international human rights, humanitarian, and criminal law, provide vital tools to achieve this goal, by framing access to food as an international rights issue.
Bio:
Otto Spijkers is assistant professor of international and European law at Leiden University College (LUC), Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University. Before joining Leiden University College, Otto was professor of international law at Wuhan University’s China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies as well as its Research Institute of Environmental Law. Prior to joining Wuhan University, he worked at the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law and Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea of Utrecht University, Netherlands. He wrote his doctoral dissertation, entitled The United Nations, the Evolution of Global Values and International Law, at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University.