PHM-Exch> Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter: WTO

[Claudio Schuftan]

 HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

*Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter*
*

*MISSION** TO THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION*** *(25 June 2008)*

**

*Summary *

The present report seeks to explore the relationship between the agreements
concluded under the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
particularly the Agreement on Agriculture, and the obligation of the Members
of the WTO to respect the human right to adequate food. It is based on the
mission of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to the WTO.

In the report, the Special Rapporteur argues that, if trade is to work for
development and to contribute to the realization of the right to adequate
food, it needs to recognize the specificity of agricultural products, rather
than to treat them as any other commodities, and to allow more flexibilities
to developing countries, particularly in order to shield their agricultural
producers from the competition from industrialized countries’ farmers. The
main impacts of the current multilateral trade regime on the right to food
include: (a) increased dependency on international trade which may lead to
loss of export revenues when the prices of export commodities go down,
threats to local producers when low-priced imports arrive on the domestic
markets, against which these producers are unable to compete, and balance of
payments problems for the net food-importing countries when the prices of
food commodities go up; (b) potential abuses of market power in increasingly
concentrated global food supply chains and further dualization of the
domestic farming sector; and (c) potential impacts on the environment and on
human health and nutrition, impacts that are usually ignored in
international trade discussions, despite their close relationship to the
right to adequate food.

The report proposes ways to reconcile trade with the right to food,
addressing the failure of global governance mechanisms to tackle the lack of
coordination between human rights obligations and trade commitments - a
failure which mechanisms ensuring a better coordination at the domestic
level may not be able to compensate for. The report invites States to assess
the impacts of trade agreements on the right to food and ensure they do not
accept undertakings under the WTO framework which would be incompatible with
their right-to-food obligations.



Source: www.unscn.org
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