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[claudio]

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 question perhaps not yet clearly answered in nutrition
circles is: Why is the commitment of nutrition professionals to a Human
Rights approach, although sorely needed, still not a reality?

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 Globalization. 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 approach 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 (macroeconomic) 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 governments is
the most important cause of Human Rights violations.  The Human Rights
approach shows us what states should do or should not do. When they fail the
test, many governments actually use the Globalization 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  substantive 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 nutrition 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 shortcomings more proactively.

13. A Human Rights-focused analysis of statistical data should examine 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 protest if that is not the case. In so doing, they
will actually be addressing the whole gamut of government Human Rights
violations.

14. But are governments the sole holders of Human Rights duties? Legally,
the answer is yes (they are the actual signatories of the respective
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 worldwide 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 conceptual framework. Not surprisingly,
this led others to pursue yet a more ambitious 'right to development' goal.
But the latter has encountered powerful detractors in the ranks of the
developed countries, 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 having, for long,
infringed the economic and social rights of developing countries].

17. Although the recognition of the fundamental right to adequate nutrition
of all humanity is the ethical and political basis of the overall approach
nutrition professionals should embrace, really understanding 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 simply 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 language
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 recognition 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 establish specific local
action priorities. The right to adequate nutrition has yet to acquire a more
operational meaning for people as well, and that is a major political
responsibility all nutrition professionals have to deal with now.

22. Put another way, in operational terms, effectively mainstreaming Human
Rights in all nutrition activities remains a challenge of enormous
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
aviva at netnam.vn