Realising the Right to Food

29.11.21 04:03 PM

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life – this is the widely accepted definition of food security emerging from the World Food Summit in 1996.


The term ‘food security’ points to 4 dimensions:

  1. Availability – sufficient quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production or imports, including aid
  2. Access – Food access by individuals to adequate resources or entitlements, for acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet
  3. Utilisation – utilisation of food through adequate diet, clean water, sanitation and health care, to reach a state of nutritional well being where all psychological needs are met 
  4. Stability – to be food secure, a population, a household or individual must have access to adequate food at all times, without the risk of losing access as a consequence of economic or climatic crisis or cyclical events 

The definition of food security has evolved - from food supply to human right

The term ‘food security’ first originated in the 1970s when the World Food Conference defined it in terms of food supply – assuring the availability and price stability of basic foodstuff at the international and regional level. Since then, the concepts of food security have evolved, to reflect changes in official and policy thinking. In 1986, the World Bank published a highly influential report on Poverty and Hunger, which introduced the distinction between chronic food insecurity, associated with problems of structural poverty and low incomes and transitory food insecurity, involving periods of intense pressure caused by natural disasters, economic collapse or conflict. The findings of the report were complemented by economist Amartya Sen’s theory of poverty and famine in 1981, which highlighted the effect of personal entitlements on food access i.e. production, labour, trade and transfers. He postulated that people face starvation when their full entitlement set does not provide them adequate food for subsistence, contrary to the Malthusian idea which postulated that starvation occurs when there are more people and less food. 


The present definition of food security reinforces that food security is multi-dimensional and in turn, it has enabled policy interventions which enable the promotion and recovery of livelihood options for people. The ethical and human rights dimension of food security has emerged more recently. The Right to Food was first recognised in the UN Declaration of Human rights in 1948. But, only in the 1996 World Food Summit, it was formally adopted as an approach towards food security.


So, is our world food secure?

In a world which produces enough food to feed its entire population, food emergencies have only risen, especially in the most vulnerable regions. Even before the covid-19 pandemic, an estimated 25% of the world’s population i.e. 2 billion people were severely or moderately affected by food insecurity. Of which, 690 million tend to run out of food or go without eating, for a day or at worst, for days. A disproportionately large number of those people live in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Reducing hunger by half by 2015 was one of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Achieving Zero Hunger remains prominent in the the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which were framed in 2015. SDG-2 is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition by 2030. The 2020 FAO State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report indicates that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and urgent action must be taken. 


When availability of food is not the main issue, what is causing food insecurity for so many millions of people in our world? We will take a look in the next post.


Priya Joshi