A Human Rights-Based Approach to Food and Land Issues – A Normative Analysis

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Food issues are prevalent in many societies. The Arab Spring began with popular unrest and riots in Tunisia about rising food prices. In India access to food for the most vulnerable groups in society is a permanent struggle. 800 million people in India have to rely on subsidised rice in order to survive. Farmers in Mozambique have been evicted from their land by companies for the construction of palm oil plantations. Farm land is taken away from small farmers in order to produce biofuels instead. In Europe, a rising number of people pay weekly visits to charitybased food banks to receive food packages to have a few basic meals a week. Many, but not all of these incidents happen as a result of actions of governments and transnational corporations. Economic benefits, making profit, market forces and trade often prevail over the food and land interests of local people and vulnerable members of society. The human rights dimensions of these types of economic processes are often missing or ignored. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the normative aspects of food and land issues. The question that will be discussed is how the realization of access to food and land for farmers and consumers can be approached from a human rights perspective. In other words, what are the components of a human rights approach to food and land issues? In international human rights law a normative framework has been developed which has the potential of guiding the actions of key stakeholders, such as governments, civil society organizations and individuals. The approach which will be followed in this chapter to answer the question identified above is a normative analysis of relevant hard and soft human rights law. The framework that will be applied is a human rights-based approach which consists of a number of principles or components. The different elements of such an approach will be applied to food and land issues. In general, these components include the notions of right-holders, duty bearers, different types of obligations, non-discrimination, protection of vulnerable groups, participation, transparency and the availability of accountability mechanisms and legal remedies.