The Fight for the Right to Food documents the work of the UN's first Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000 to 2008, giving important insights into the work of a 'Special Rapporteur' and his team. This book advances the understanding of the right to food in theory and in practice, offering essential conceptual and legal developments and an operational understanding of the right to food by documenting experiences in 11 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. It offers insights into the obstacles to the realization of the right to food, sets out key challenges for the future, and pushes forward the frontiers of international human rights law to address the persistence of hunger in the face of globalization.

CONTENTS
Preface
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Introduction: Hunger and the Right to Food
PART I: THE RIGHT TO FOOD IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
The Definition of the Right to Food in International Law
The Right to Food of the Most Vulnerable People
The Right to Food in an Era of Globalization
The Right to Food in Situations of Armed Conflict
PART II: THE RIGHT TO FOOD IN PRACTICE: COUNTRY MISSIONS IN AFRICA, ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA
Niger
Brazil
Bangladesh
The Occupied Palestinian Territories
Ethiopia
Mongolia
Guatemala
India
Lebanon
Bolivia
Cuba
Conclusion
Annexures
End Notes

Launched in 2011 by Graduate Institute Publications with Palgrave (UK), the International Relations and Development Series is a new peer-reviewed book series focusing on global issues in the Institute’s areas of study. It aims to promote research concentrating on global and multi-level governance, involving the United Nations and other international organisations as well as key regions and regional organisations. The series combines disciplinary with interdisciplinary perspectives.
The first book in the series “The Fight for the Right to Food: Lessons Learned” was written by Jean Ziegler, the United Nations first Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000-2008 and former teacher at the Institute, Christophe Golay and Claire Mahon, research fellows at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Sally-Anne Way, Research Director at the Centre for Economic and Social Rights.
On the occasion of the book’s release Graduate Institute Publications interviewed the authors.

What is the Right to Food?
The right to food is one of the most fundamental human rights. It was recognised for the first time in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. It is the right to live in dignity, free from hunger. It protects the right of peasants to have access to productive resources and the right of workers to be paid a decent wage.
What is the originality of this book, compared to other books on the right to food? Few books have been published on the right to food. The originality of this book lies in the fact that it builds on the work of the first United Nations’ Special Rapporteur and his team on the right to food from 2000 to 2008. It describes the evolution of the right to food since 2000 and the lessons learned from missions undertaken in countries as diverse as Niger, Ethiopia, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Cuba, the Palestinian Occupied Territory, Lebanon, India, Bangladesh and Mongolia.

Which lessons did you learn from your work on the right to food?
One of the most important lessons that we learned is that in a world that is richer than ever before and already produces more than enough food to feed the global population, we need political solutions, rather than complicated technical solutions to eradicate hunger. Eradicating hunger is not only a question of finding resources and developing new technologies. It is also a question of challenging structural injustices, inequities of power and economic inequalities. In the last decades, States and international organisations have adopted two very different approaches to respond to world hunger, based on social justice and human rights or the “Washington Consensus” emphasizing liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. We describe this schizophrenic situation and conclude that only a normative approach, based on the right to food is appropriate to fight hunger efficiently. As Rousseau wrote, “between the rich and the poor, it is freedom which oppresses and it is law which liberates”.

What was the evolution of the realisation of the right to food in the last decade? Did some regions or countries do better than others? Why?
Despite the commitments made at the World Food Summit in 1996 and in the Millennium Declaration in 2000, hunger continued to increase over the last decade. In the today’s world, one child under ten years old dies from hunger every five seconds. 25,000 people die from hunger or related causes every day. And over one billion people are gravely and permanently undernourished. Few countries have decided to fight hunger and its structural causes – discrimination and economic, social and political exclusion – in the last decade. Most of the countries that have done so are in Latin America. As the example of Bolivia shows, when a strong political will is combined with a very creative civil society, progress towards the full realization of the right to food can be achieved.

9780230284647

Jean ZIEGLER, Christophe GOLAY, Claire MAHON, Sally-Anne WAY, The Fight for the Right to Food : Lessons Learned, London/Geneva, Palgrave Macmillan/Graduate Institute Publications, 2011 (464 pp.)

JEAN Ziegler is Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Council's Advisory Committee, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Previously, he was UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He is an expert on economic, social and cultural rights, and has published numerous books on globalization and development.

CHRISTOPHE Golay is Joint Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Senior Researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Switzerland. He is also Visiting Lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Switzerland. Previously, he was Legal Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

CLAIRE Mahon is Joint Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Senior Researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Switzerland. She is also Special Advisor to Mary Robinson, Chair of the GAVI Alliance, and Adjunct Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, USA. She has previously worked as Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and as an international human rights lawyer for various non-governmental organizations including Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists.

SALLY-ANNE Way is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Economic and Social Rights, Spain. She previously worked as Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and as Research Associate at the Graduate Institute of international and Development Studies (IHEID), Switzerland. She has also served as a consultant to various UN agencies, and has held posts at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK, and at the Bank of England. She has published widely on issues of human rights and development.