PHM-Exch> Press Release: Launch of the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2013

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Wilma Strothenke <Strothenke at fian.org>


PRESS RELEASE: LAUNCH OF THE WATCH 2013

Launch of the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2013 - 'Alternatives
and Resistance to Policies that Generate Hunger'.

Stop Policies that Generate Hunger!

Rome, Berlin, Heidelberg, Utrecht, October 8th, 2013 - In a world that
produces enough food for all, the sixth edition of the   Right to Food
and Nutrition Watch, that was launched in Rome today, identifies a
number of policies that generate hunger and malnutrition instead of
reducing them. In response, articles in the report urge that such
policies and the actors who implement them, respect and incorporate
the human right to adequate food when redesigning detrimental
policies. The report further insists upon the need for inclusive and
meaningful participation of people and communities in the development
of those public policies which affect their lives.

For more information, and to download the report:   www.rtfn-watch.org

  Launch of the Watch in Rome
  Press Release



Launch of the Watch in Rome

The Watch was launched today, 8 October, in Rome, with Olivier de
Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Léa Winter,
Coordinator of the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, Stineke Oenema,
Chair of the CSM Working Group on Nutrition, ICCO, and Angel
Strappazón, LVC-CLOC, Argentina



Press Release

Stop Policies that Generate Hunger!

The Watch presents national case studies and analysis that reveal:

 policies that foster violence and discrimination against women with
regard to equal access to natural resources, inheritances, equal wages
and political decision-making, which both: limit women's capacity to
contribute fully to food and nutrition security; and, clearly produce
the conditions that result in the fact that women and girls worldwide
are the most affected in their health, nutrition and dignity;
 policies that systematically limit and exclude large groups,
including peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolks, pastoralists
and indigenous peoples from participating in those decisions that
affect their very livelihoods;
 policies on a global level that facilitate land grabbing,
concentrated ownership of natural resources and the commodification of
public goods that deprive smallholders and other people of their food
resources.


"There is one response to these policies that generate hunger: just
stop them!," said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN
International, one of the organizations that co-publish the Watch. "A
human rights approach, including the enforcement of international
legal instruments, is fundamental to reverse global trends leading to
discrimination, exclusion and deprivation. Policies on trade and
investment, energy and finance, agriculture and nutrition must be
scrutinized under the criterion of coherence with human rights."

The report stresses that a check of human rights coherence is
particularly needed for global initiatives such as the G8 New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition, the Scaling-Up Nutrition initiative
(SUN), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and other
Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in agriculture or nutrition. All of
these initiatives include significant involvement of corporations as
well as the attendant conflicts of interest based on commercial
considerations that become inevitably entwined in the making of public
policy.

According to Olivier de Schutter, the Special UN Rapporteur on the
Right to Food, "[t]he failures of the dominant food systems are by now
well acknowledged. But inertia still have been prevailing, largely
because no credible alternatives were proposed. What this publication
does is to show that such alternatives are emerging. Not from the
laboratories of food scientists or from governmental agencies - but
bottom up, from the initiatives of people who seek to regain control
over the food systems on which they depend."

The 2013 edition of the Watch addresses Alternatives and Resistance to
Policies that Generate Hunger and details how civil society
initiatives based on the respect of human rights, offer solutions
consistent with sustainability, equality, and justice, as well as with
concepts such as food sovereignty, agro-ecology, or peasants' seeds.

Published in English, Spanish and French in October 2013

  www.rtfn-watch.org

Published by: Brot für die Welt, FIAN International and Interchurch
Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO) in partnership with
the African Network on the Right to Food (ANoRF), International Centre
Crossroad (Crocevia), DanChurchAid (DCA), Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance
(EAA), Habitat International Coalition (HIC), International Indian
Treaty Council (IITC), Observatori DESC - Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, People's Health Movement (PHM), Inter-American
Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development (PIDHDD),
REDSAN-CPLP, Terra, Nuova, US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), World
Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), and World Organisation
against Torture (OMCT).



www.fian.org