The Right to Food

A/HRC/RES/19/7No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2012.

What else is in this group?

42 documents · 2002–2026

Newer documents in this group exist (latest: 2026).

2026A/HRC/RES/61/13The right to foodCompare with earlier document
2025A/RES/80/210The right to foodCompare with earlier document
2024A/RES/79/171The right to foodCompare with earlier document
2024A/HRC/RES/55/4The right to foodCompare with earlier document
2023A/RES/78/198The right to foodCompare with earlier document

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What subjects does this mandate have?

10 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Food Distribution Food Problems Food Security Hunger International Cooperation Malnutrition Poverty Mitigation Resources Mobilization Right to Food

What does this mandate say?

69 operative paragraphs

Reaffirms that hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human dignity and therefore requires the adoption of urgent measures at the national, regional and international levels for its elimination;

Also reaffirms the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger so as to be able to fully develop and maintain his or her physical and mental capacities;

Expresses grave concern at the evolution of the world food crisis, which has been further aggravated by the world economic and financial crisis and seriously undermines the realization of the right to food for all, especially for one sixth of the world population, mainly in developing and least developed countries, who suffer from hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity;

Considers it intolerable that, according to an estimation by the United Nations Children’s Fund, more than one third of the children who die every year before the age of 5 years do so from hunger-related illness, and that, according to an estimation by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the number of people who are undernourished is nine hundred and twenty five million worldwide, and that there is an additional one billion people suffering from serious malnutrition, including as a result of the global food crisis, even though, according to the latter organization, the planet could produce enough food to feed twelve billion people;

Expresses its concern that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger, food and nutrition insecurity and poverty, in part as a result of gender inequality and discrimination, that in many countries girls are twice as likely as boys to die from malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, and that it is estimated that almost twice as many women as men suffer from malnutrition;

Recognizes the importance of smallholder farmers in developing countries, including women and local and indigenous communities, in ensuring food and nutrition security, reducing poverty and preserving ecosystems, and the need to assist their development;

Encourages all States to take action to address gender inequality and discrimination against women, in particular where it contributes to the malnutrition of women and girls, including measures to ensure the full and equal realization of the right to food and ensuring that women have equal access to resources, including income, land and water and their ownership, as well as full and equal access to education, science and technology, to enable them to feed themselves and their families;

Stresses the need to guarantee fair and non-discriminatory access to land rights for smallholders, traditional farmers and their organizations, including, in particular, rural women and vulnerable groups;

Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to ensure the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the fulfilment of his mandate, and encourages the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and all other United Nations bodies and mechanisms that address the right to food and food and nutrition insecurity to integrate into and effectively implement a gender perspective and a human rights perspective in their relevant policies, programmes and activities regarding access to food;

Reaffirms the need to ensure that programmes delivering safe and nutritious food are inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities;

Encourages States to mainstream a human rights perspective in building and reviewing their national strategies for the realization of the right to food for all, and to take steps to promote the conditions for everyone to be free from hunger and, as soon as possible, to enjoy fully the right to food and, where appropriate, to consider establishing appropriate institutional mechanisms, in order to:

Identify, at the earliest stage possible, emerging threats to the right to adequate food, with a view to facing them;

Strengthen the overall national human rights protection system with a view to contributing to the realization of the right to food;

Improve coordination between the different relevant ministries and between national and subnational levels of government;

Improve accountability, with a clear allocation of responsibilities, and the setting of precise time frames for the realization of the dimensions of the right to food that require progressive implementation;

Ensure adequate participation, particularly of the most food-insecure segments of the population;

Pay specific attention to the need to improve the situation of the most vulnerable segments of society;

Underlines the significance of national government policies and strategies on food production and poverty alleviation;

Stresses that the primary responsibility of States is to promote and protect the right to food and that the international community should provide, through a coordinated response and upon request, international cooperation in support for national and regional efforts by providing the assistance necessary to increase food production, particularly through agricultural development assistance, the transfer of technology, food crop rehabilitation assistance and food aid ensuring food and nutrition security, with a special focus on the gender-sensitive dimension;

Calls upon States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to fulfil their obligations under article 2, paragraph 1, and article 11, paragraph 2, thereof, in particular with regard to the right to adequate food;

Calls upon States, individually and through international cooperation and assistance, relevant multilateral institutions and other relevant stakeholders, to take all the measures necessary to ensure the realization of the right to food as an essential human rights objective, and to consider reviewing any policy or measure that could have a negative impact on the realization of the right to food, particularly the right of everyone to be free from hunger, before instituting such a policy or measure;

Stresses that improving access to productive resources and investment in rural development is essential for eradicating hunger and poverty, in particular in developing countries, including through the promotion of investments in appropriate, small-scale irrigation and water management technologies in order to reduce vulnerability to droughts, as well as in programmes, practices and policies to scale up agroecological approaches, and encourages States and donors, both public and private, to examine and consider ways to integrate, where applicable and according to national contexts, the recommendations contained in the latest report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food in policies and programmes;

Recognizes that 80 per cent of people suffering from hunger live in rural areas, and 50 per cent are small-scale and traditional farmers, in particular women farmers, and that these people are especially vulnerable to food and nutrition insecurity, given the increasing cost of various inputs and the fall in farm incomes; that access to land, water, seeds and other natural resources is an increasing challenge for poor producers; that sustainable and gender-sensitive agricultural policies are important tools to achieve food and nutrition security and rural development; and that support by States for small farmers, fishing communities and local enterprises is a key element to food security and the provision of the right to food;

Stresses the importance of fighting hunger in rural areas, including through national efforts supported by international partnerships to stop desertification and land degradation and through investments and public policies that are specifically appropriate to the risk of drylands and, in this regard, calls for the full implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa;

Recalls the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and acknowledges that many indigenous organizations and representatives of indigenous peoples have expressed in different forums their deep concern over the obstacles and challenges they face to the full enjoyment of the right to food, and calls upon States to take special actions to combat the root causes of the disproportionately high level of hunger and malnutrition among indigenous peoples and the continuous discrimination against them;

Requests all States and private actors, and international organizations within their respective mandates, to take fully into account the need to promote the effective realization of the right to food for all, including in ongoing negotiations in different fields;

Encourages all relevant international organizations and agencies to bring a human rights perspective and the need for the realization of the right to food for all to their studies, research, reports and resolutions on the issue of food and nutrition security;

Recognizes the need to strengthen national commitment as well as international assistance, upon the request of and in cooperation with affected countries, towards the full realization and protection of the right to food and, in particular, to develop national protection mechanisms for people forced to leave their homes and land because of hunger or humanitarian emergencies affecting the enjoyment of the right to food;

Stresses the need to make efforts to mobilize and optimize the allocation and utilization of technical and financial resources from all sources, including external debt relief for developing countries, and to reinforce national actions to implement sustainable food security policies;

Calls for the early conclusion and a successful, development-oriented outcome of the Doha Round of trade negotiations of the World Trade Organization as a contribution to creating international conditions permitting the full realization of the right to food;

Encourages the Special Rapporteur to continue to cooperate with States in order to enhance the contribution of development cooperation and food aid to the realization of the right to food, within existing mechanisms, taking into account the views of all stakeholders;

Stresses that all States should make every effort to ensure that their international policies of a political and economic nature, including international trade agreements, do not have a negative impact on the right to food in other countries;

Recalls the importance of the New York Declaration on Action against Hunger and Poverty, and recommends the continuation of efforts aimed at identifying additional sources of financing for the fight against hunger and poverty;

Recognizes that the commitments made at the World Food Summit in 1996 to halve the number of people who are undernourished are not being fulfilled, while recognizing the efforts of Member States in that regard, and urges all States and international financial and development institutions, as well as the relevant United Nations agencies and funds, to give priority to and provide the necessary funding for realizing the aim of halving by 2015 the number, or at least the proportion, of people who suffer from hunger, as stated in Millennium Development Goal 1, as well as the right to food, as set out in the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the United Nations Millennium Declaration;

Reaffirms that integrating food and nutritional support, with the goal that all people at all times will have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life, is part of a comprehensive effort to improve public health, including the response to the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases;

Urges States to give adequate priority in their development strategies and expenditures to the realization of the right to food;

Stresses the importance of international cooperation and development assistance, as an effective contribution to both the expansion and improvement of agriculture and its environmental sustainability, and the provision of humanitarian food assistance in activities relating to emergency situations for the realization of the right to food and the achievement of sustainable food and nutrition security, while recognizing that each country has the primary responsibility for ensuring the implementation of national programmes and strategies in this regard;

Reaffirms the commitment made in the ministerial declaration of the 2009 high-level segment of the Economic and Social Council to eliminating hunger and to securing food for all, today and tomorrow, and reiterates that relevant United Nations organizations should be assured the resources needed to expand and enhance their food assistance, and support safety net programmes designed to address hunger and malnutrition, when appropriate, through the use of local and regional purchase;

Invites all relevant international organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to promote such policies and projects that have a positive impact on the right to food, to ensure that partners respect the right to food in the implementation of common projects, to support strategies of Member States aimed at the fulfilment of the right to food and to avoid any actions that could have a negative impact on the realization of the right to food;

Calls upon Member States, the United Nations system and other relevant stakeholders to support national efforts aimed at responding rapidly to the food crises currently occurring across Africa, in particular in the Horn of Africa and in the Sahel, and expresses its deep concern that funding shortfalls are forcing the World Food Programme to cut operations across different regions, including southern Africa;

Encourages developing countries to establish regional arrangements, where they do not exist, with the support of the international community and development partners to ensure adequate food production and thereby contribute to ensuring food and nutrition security, in particular in developing countries that have scarce fertile land;

Welcomes the adoption by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations of a regional approach towards ensuring food and nutrition security, and expresses its appreciation for the current collaboration with all Rome-based institutions working comprehensively towards the realization of the right to food;

Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food and the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises to cooperate on the subject of the contribution of the private sector to the realization of the right to food, including the importance of ensuring sustainable water resources for human consumption and agriculture;

Encourages the Special Rapporteur to continue his collaboration with relevant international organizations and United Nations agencies, programmes and funds, in particular the Rome-based ones, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme, in order to contribute to ensuring that the right to food is promoted further within these organizations, in accordance with their respective mandates, including for the advancement of smallholders and agricultural workers in both developing and least developed countries;

Expresses concern at the negative impact on the full enjoyment of the right to adequate food of insufficient purchasing power and the increased price volatility of agricultural commodities on international markets, particularly on people in developing countries and on net food-importing countries;

Stresses the need to address the root causes of excessive food price volatility, including its structural causes, at all levels, and the need to manage the risks linked to high and excessively volatile prices in agriculture commodities and their consequences for global food and nutrition security;

Encourages the Special Rapporteur, within his existing mandate, to explore, in consultation with Member States and relevant stakeholders, ways and means of raising the capacity of countries, particularly developing countries, including least developed and net food-importing developing countries, to ensure the realization and protection of the right to adequate food for their populations, and to report on his findings to the Human Rights Council;

Takes note with appreciation of the report of the Special Rapporteur1 and the recommendations contained therein;

Calls upon all States and, if appropriate, relevant international organizations:

To combat the different forms of malnutrition as a means to realize the right to adequate food, including, if appropriate, by adopting a national strategy in this regard;

To take measures and support programmes which are aimed at combating the irreversible effects of chronic undernutrition in early childhood, in particular by targeting the first thousand days of a child’s life;

To support the national plans and programmes of countries to improve nutrition in poor households, in particular plans and programmes that are aimed at combating undernutrition in mothers and children, and those targeting the irreversible effects of chronic undernutrition in early childhood, from gestation to the age of two years;

Supports the fulfilment of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, as extended for a period of three years by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 13/4, and takes note with appreciation of the work conducted by the Special Rapporteur in the fulfilment of his mandate;

Requests the Special Rapporteur, as part of his mandate, to continue to monitor the evolution of the world food crisis and, in the context of his mandate and regular reports, to keep the Human Rights Council informed of the impact of the crisis on the enjoyment of the right to food and to alert it to possible further actions in this regard;

Requests the Secretary-General and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to continue to provide all the human and financial resources necessary for the continuation of the effective fulfilment of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur;

Welcomes the work already done by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in promoting the right to adequate food, in particular its general comment No. 12 (1999) on the right to adequate food (article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), in which the Committee affirmed, inter alia, that the right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfilment of other human rights enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, and is also inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social policies at both the national and international levels, oriented to the eradication of poverty and the fulfilment of all human rights for all;

Notes general comment No. 15 (2002) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the right to water (articles 11 and 12 of the Covenant), in which the Committee noted, inter alia, the importance of ensuring sustainable water resources for human consumption and agriculture in the realization of the right to adequate food;

Reaffirms that the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security, adopted by the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in November 2004, represent a practical tool in the promotion of the realization of the right to food for all, contribute to the achievement of food security and thus provide an additional instrument in the attainment of internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration;

Acknowledges the work being carried out by the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on the right to food and, in that regard, takes note of its submission to the Council of the study on severe malnutrition and childhood diseases with children affected by noma as an example, including the human rights principles and guidelines to improve the protection of children at risk or affected by malnutrition, specifically at risk of or affected by noma, annexed thereto, and encourages States to implement those principles;

Takes note of the final study of the Advisory Committee on the advancement of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas;

Also takes note of the preliminary study on the promotion of human rights of the urban poor: strategies and best practices, prepared by the Advisory Committee, and requests that the final study on this topic be presented to the Human Rights Council at its twenty-second session;

Further takes note of the concept note for the preliminary study on rural women and the right to food, prepared by the Advisory Committee, and requests the Committee to continue to undertake a comprehensive study in that regard;

Requests the Office of the High Commissioner to collect the views and comments of all Member States, all relevant United Nations special agencies and programmes and all other relevant stakeholders on the preliminary studies mentioned in paragraphs 52 and 53 above, so that the Advisory Committee may take them into account for the conclusion of its final studies;

Welcomes the continued cooperation of the High Commissioner, the Advisory Committee and the Special Rapporteur, and encourages them to continue their cooperation;

Calls upon all Governments to cooperate with and assist the Special Rapporteur in his task by supplying all necessary information requested by him and to give serious consideration to responding favourably to the requests of the Special Rapporteur to visit their countries to enable him to fulfil his mandate more effectively;

Recalls the requests made by the General Assembly, in its resolution 66/158, that the Special Rapporteur submit to the Assembly an interim report at its sixty-seventh session on the implementation of that resolution and to continue his work, including by examining the emerging issues with regard to the realization of the right to food within his existing mandate;

Invites Governments, relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, treaty bodies and civil society actors, including non-governmental organizations, as well as the private sector, to cooperate fully with the Special Rapporteur in the fulfilment of his mandate through, inter alia, the submission of comments and suggestions on ways and means of realizing the right to food;

Requests the Special Rapporteur to submit a report on the implementation of the present resolution to the Human Rights Council at its twenty-second session;

Decides to continue consideration of this matter under the same agenda item at its twenty-second session.

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