Peoples’ movements and civil society organisations have sent a powerful message to governments around the world during the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) held in Rome on 19-21 November. For three days prior to the conference, close to 200 representatives from all walks of life met to prepare a civil society joint position that was presented to the final plenary of the conference. And this is what we said and what happened.
Representatives from small scale farming, fishing and pastoralist communities, consumers and the urban poor, women, youth, indigenous peoples and agricultural and food workers gathered. These social movements joined civil society organisations to share their values and their aspirations. We joined forces to agree on a common vision on how to eradicate malnutrition in all its forms, and to hold governments and intergovernmental organisations to account regarding their obligations and commitments.
Our joint declaration presented to world governments started by stating that: “It is unacceptable that in a world of plenty more than 800 million of our brothers and sisters go to bed hungry every night and over half a billion are obese.(…) The injustice of malnutrition has meant that several thousand of our children have died since this discussion started. These problems should have been tackled a long time ago.”
The conclusion of the official ICN2 negotiations is a welcome step, in particular its focus on malnutrition in all its forms, on the life-cycle approach and on the need to revisit the food system. We broadly welcomed the conclusions, but found them inadequate to face the magnitude of the malnutrition challenge. In particular, the concluding documents did not give due attention to the root causes of malnutrition.
Vital issues ignored
“22 years – an entire generation – have passed since the first International Conference on Nutrition. It is unacceptable that millions of people continue suffer from and die of preventable causes of malnutrition in all its forms. This violence must stop immediately. We call upon Member States to make clear and firm commitments at both national and international levels to ensure the full realisation of the human right to adequate food and nutrition and related rights. We will not watch idly as another 22 years pass by. We stand ready to play our part and take up our responsibilities. We demand that Member States and the UN system live up to their obligations. We hereby declare a worldwide People’s Decade of Action on Nutrition. The time for action is now!”
From the Public Interest Civil Society Organizations and Social Movements Forum Declaration presented at ICN2, Rome, 21 November 2014. For the full declaration see: www.fian.org
Some of these root causes were only marginally dealt with, or were even effectively swept under the proverbial carpet. One of the vital issues is the increasingly negative impact of predatory initiatives by the private sector and especially transnational corporations, through land grabbing, and also the grabbing of oceans and lakes, seeds and native genetic resources, as well as cultural and social goods.
Another ignored issue is related to the severe negative impacts of the dominant agro-industrial food systems that erode and contaminate our soil and water, acidify the ocean, destroy biodiversity and dietary diversity, and add to the world’s climate change challenge. The aggressive marketing of heavily processed foods is the main cause of the obesity epidemics and similarly, the marketing of breast milk substitutes is undermining all the known health benefits of breastfeeding. Finally, in the conclusions no mention was made of the need to stop violence against women and violations of women´s rights, including child marriage and unwanted adolescent pregnancy, which continue to be one of the most important causes of infant and woman malnutrition.
Taking this into account
Our joint declaration notes these issues by stating “that nutrition can only be addressed in the context of vibrant and flourishing local food systems that are deeply ecologically rooted, environmentally sound and culturally and socially appropriate. We are convinced that food sovereignty is a fundamental pre-condition to ensure food security and guarantee the human right to adequate food and nutrition.
In this context, it is necessary to reaffirm the centrality of small-scale and family food producers as the key actors and drivers of local food systems and the main investors in agriculture. Their secure access to, and control over, resources such as land, water and aquatic resources, adequate mobility routes, local seeds, breeds and all other genetic resources, technical and financial resources, as well as social protection, particularly for women, are all essential factors to ensure diversified diets and adequate nutrition”.
The declaration also reaffirms our understanding of food being inseparable from nutrition: “Food is the expression of values, cultures, social relations and people’s self-determination, and the act of feeding oneself and others embodies our sovereignty, ownership and empowerment. When nourishing ourselves and eating with our family, friends, and community, we reaffirm our cultural identities, interdependence with nature, control of our life course and human dignity. Understanding the challenge of malnutrition in all its forms therefore requires a holistic and multidisciplinary analysis, one that combines the political and technical perspectives.”
Rights and wrongs
At the same time, we demanded that all policies, programmes and action plans on food, nutrition and related issues, must be framed within an unambiguous understanding that the right to adequate food and nutrition and the right to health and water, are fundamental human rights. We also called for a clause to forbid the use of food as a political and economic weapon in the official ICN2 declaration.
However, it was not easy to get this accepted. Some powerful governments stalled the discussions, and attempted to eliminate any reference to the human right to adequate food and nutrition. They were able to significantly weaken the ICN2 declaration and framework for action, but a few Latin American, Asian and African governments together with some European governments managed to salvage part of it. Effectively, these governments guaranteed that the human right to adequate food is mentioned at least in one paragraph, but not as the framework in which nutrition must be dealt with, and the present agricultural model was recognized as one of the main problems.
Some governments wanted to keep the global governance of food security and nutrition separate from the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), all though this is currently the most inclusive intergovernmental platform. Their intention to launch a separate UN nutrition governance network a few days before ICN2 was put in the open by civil society, and consequently aborted under pressure from member states.
In corridors in Rome, we heard that several governments from all continents are defending the food and nutrition governance mechanism proposed by us as civil society. Our proposal actually puts the Committee on World Food Security at the centre of promoting coherent food and nutrition policies with the realisation of human rights for all. We also called upon members states to request the Human Rights Council to ensure that the follow up to this ICN2 conference is coherent with respect to protection and fulfilment of the right to adequate food and nutrition, and related rights.
Flavio Luiz Valente
Flavio Luiz Valente is Secretary General of FIAN International, an international organisation that advocates for the right to food.
Email: valente@fian.org
