PHM-Exch> Launch: Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2012

[Claudio Schuftan]

*To be released on September 25, 2012*

*Right to Food and Nutrition Watch* *2012*

*WHO DECIDES ABOUT GLOBAL FOOD AND*

* NUTRITION? *

*Strategies to Regain Control*


 *to be launched in Asunción, Barcelona, Berlin, Bogota, Brussels, Cordoba,
Cotonou, Dakar, Geneva, La Hague, La Paz, Lomé, Mexico City, Nantes,
Oaxaca, Ouagadougou, Paris, Quito, Rome, Vienna, and many more cities!*

In preparation for World Food Day 2012, the fifth annual *Right to* *Food
and Nutrition Watch* will be presented to the public in over twenty
countries by representatives of fifteen civil society organizations and
their partners who worked together to publish this report.

In this 2012 edition, the *Right to Food and Nutrition Watch* offers a
multi-facetted overview of how the unfairly concentrated power of
decision-making results in the persistence of hunger and malnutrition.

The *Watch 2012* analyses the increasing influence and control of
agribusiness and financial actors on food and nutrition, including their
impact on food speculation and on the production of food resources. It also
describes the worrisome trend of governments’ and multilateral
organizations’ increased recognition and promotion of the private sector
and related philanthropic foundations as important stakeholders in the
struggle against hunger and malnutrition. Their role is played out
importantly through public private partnerships (PPPs) and as key investors
in agriculture, health, and other development ventures. The Watch
highlights the lack of adequate public regulation and the blatant conflicts
of interest in these developments.

On the other hand, social movements and other expressions of civil society
have engaged in strategies to regain people's control over food and
nutrition. Several of these initiatives are analyzed in the *Watch* as
well. A certain pattern of common denominators is highlighted: many of
these struggles are rooted in the conviction of food sovereignty and
peoples sovereignty, and relate directly in their political action to the
use and strengthening of human rights instruments. Last but not least,
these movements seem to follow a strategy to effectively occupy political
decision space in local, national, and global governance structures.

The *Right to Food and Nutrition Watch* is the first and only international
periodical review that monitors state actors’ actions related to the
realization of the right to food and nutrition. This report provides a
platform for human rights experts, civil society activists, social
movements, the media, and scholars to exchange their experiences on how
best to carry out right to food and nutrition work, including lobbying and
advocacy work. The Watch* *is also a powerful tool to put pressure on
policymakers at the national and international level to take the human
right to food and nutrition seriously into account.
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