The Right to Food

A/HRC/RES/37/10No 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 2018.

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

Agricultural Development Anti-Discrimination Measures Development Assistance Financial Assistance Food Security Gender Mainstreaming Hunger Malnutrition Right to Food Rural Development

What does this mandate say?

41 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, sufficient 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;

Considers it intolerable that, as estimated by the United Nations Children’s Fund, nearly half of all deaths of children under the age of 5 are attributable to undernutrition, translating into the loss of about 3 million young lives a year and that, as estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about 815 million people in the world suffer from chronic hunger owing to the lack of sufficient food for the conduct of an active and healthy life, including as one of the effects derived from food insecurity, while, according to the Organization, the planet could produce enough food to feed everyone around the world;

Expresses its deep concern that, according to the report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations entitled The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2017, the number of hungry people in the world is unacceptably on the rise and the vast majority of hungry people live in developing countries;

Expresses its concern at the fact that the effects of the world food crisis continue to have serious consequences for the poorest and most vulnerable people, particularly in developing countries, which have been further aggravated by the world financial and economic crisis, and at the particular effects of this crisis on many net food-importing developing countries, especially least developed countries;

Expresses its great concern that, while women contribute more than 50 per cent of the food produced worldwide, they also account for 70 per cent of the world’s hungry, that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger, food 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;

Encourages all States to mainstream a gender perspective in food security programmes and to take action to address de jure and de facto gender inequality and discrimination against women, in particular where such inequality and discrimination contribute to the malnutrition of women and girls, including by taking measures to ensure the full and equal realization of the right to food and ensuring that women and girls have equal access to social protection and resources, including income, land and water, and their ownership, and full and equal access to health care, education, science and technology, to enable them to feed themselves and their families, and in this regard stresses the need to empower women and to strengthen their role in decision-making;

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

Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to continue to mainstream a gender perspective in the fulfilment of her 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 insecurity to integrate and effectively implement a gender perspective in their relevant policies, programmes and activities regarding access to food;

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

Encourages States to take steps with a view to progressively achieving the full realization of the right to food for all, including 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 and adopting national plans to combat hunger;

Recognizes the advances made through South-South cooperation in developing countries and regions in connection with food security and the development of agricultural production for the full realization of the right to food;

Also recognizes the importance of traditional sustainable agricultural practices, inter alia, traditional seed supply systems, including for many indigenous peoples and local communities;

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 of national and regional efforts by providing the assistance necessary to increase food production and access to food, particularly through agricultural development assistance, the transfer of technology, food crop rehabilitation assistance and food aid, achieving food security, with special attention to the specific needs of women and girls, and promoting support for the development of adapted technologies, research on rural advisory services and support for access to financing services, and to ensure support for the establishment of secure land tenure systems;

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;

Recognizes that 70 per cent of hungry people live in rural areas and 50 per cent are small-scale farm-holders, and that these people are especially vulnerable to food insecurity given the increasing cost of 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 for promoting land and agrarian reform, rural credit and insurance, technical assistance and other associated measures to achieve food security and rural development; and that support by States for small farmers, fishing communities and local enterprises, including through the facilitation of access of their products to national and international markets and the empowerment of small producers, particularly women, in value chains, is a key element for food security and 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 Those 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 to the full enjoyment of the right to food that indigenous peoples face, and calls upon States to take actions to address those obstacles and challenges and the continuous discrimination against indigenous peoples;

Welcomes the outcome document of the high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly known as the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, held on 22 and 23 September 2014, and the commitment to developing, in conjunction with the indigenous peoples concerned and where appropriate, policies, programmes and resources to support indigenous peoples’ occupations, traditional subsistence activities, economies, livelihoods, food security and nutrition;

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

Recognizes the need to strengthen national commitments and 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;

Notes with appreciation the growing movement, in different regions of the world, towards the adoption of framework laws, national strategies and measures in support of the full realization of the right to food for all;

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 successful, development-oriented outcomes of the trade negotiations held by the World Trade Organization, including on the remaining issues of the Doha Development Round, as a contribution to the creation of international conditions permitting the full realization of the right to food;

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;

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;

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 promises made at the World Food Summit in 1996 to halve the number of persons who are undernourished are not being fulfilled, while recognizing the efforts of Member States in this regard, and once again invites all international financial and development institutions and relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes to give priority to and provide the funding necessary to realize the right to food, as set out in the Rome Declaration on World Food Security, and to achieve the aims of Sustainable Development Goal 2 and other food- and nutrition-related targets;

Reaffirms that integrating food and nutritional support with the goal of ensuring that all people at all times 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 security, while recognizing that each State has the primary responsibility for ensuring the implementation of national programmes and strategies in this regard;

Calls upon States to heed the urgent United Nations humanitarian appeal to assist countries facing drought, starvation and famine with emergency aid and urgent funding, and underlines that if no immediate response is received, an estimated 20 million people, most of whom are women and children, risk losing their lives;

Invites all relevant international organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to continue to promote 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 its realization;

Encourages the Special Rapporteur to continue her collaboration with relevant international organizations and United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, 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;

Takes note of the report of the Special Rapporteur;

Supports the fulfillment of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, as established by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 6/2 of 27 September 2007;

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;

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

Invites Governments, relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, treaty bodies, civil society actors, including non-governmental organizations, and the private sector to cooperate fully with the Special Rapporteur in the fulfilment of her 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 fortieth session;

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

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