TY - JOUR
AU - te Lintelo,, Dolf
AB - Abstract Despite growing activism around the right to food in the past decade, there has been little exploration of how people understand the right and its implications. This article analyses original research that explored how people at risk of hunger understood the right to food in diverse settings in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in the aftermath of the global food crisis of 2008. The article explores understandings of the term in different contexts, its various sources and origins, and how responsibilities for upholding it were defined and allocated. It concludes that an understanding of the right to food as natural and necessary appears to be ‘common sense’: shared across contexts and groups, and part of how people negotiate their right to food in everyday life. Yet the content, origins and allocation of responsibilities for realizing the right to food also seemed to be more closely shaped by local realities than by universalist human rights or legal frameworks. Nonetheless, the view that the state was responsible for protecting citizens’ right to food in the last resort resonated across contexts that were otherwise marked by greatly differing histories and state capacities for realizing the right to food. The paper explores some of the implications of this ‘common sense’ view for right to food activism and implementation. Introduction Reference to ‘the right to food’ has been a fixture of food security debates since the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security, and the movement to enshrine the human right to food in national law has gained pace since. Where enshrined in constitutional, statutory and subordinate laws or through established jurisprudence, the right to food expresses not just a desire to achieve people’s freedom from hunger, it also specifies the responsibility of governments as duty bearers to ensure such outcomes, holding them accountable for doing so (Mechlem 2004). But having a right is not the same as enjoying that right, as old and new evidence of famine, chronic hunger and all forms of malnutrition indicates (von Grebmer et al. 2017). And as a former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Food put it: ‘people need to know their rights in order to be able to demand change and accountability from the Government’ (De Schutter 2012: 12). But what do people know of their right to food? This article takes as its starting point that people’s knowledge of their rights is likely to be critical to their enjoyment of those rights, but also that such knowledge is not simply given, flowing directly from human rights law into popular political culture, public policy, social norms, or actual practice. Instead, as Sally Engel Merry shows us, the process of implementing human rights involves a kind of ‘vernacularization’—a process of interpretation and negotiation between different interests, institutions, and understandings of ‘rights’, across multiple levels of the system. Important parts of the implementation of human rights are thus shaped not only by transnational human rights framings, but also by what happens in the ‘missing middle’, where elite and popular conceptions of specific rights and responsibilities within particular contexts and histories become lenses through which human rights are refracted, re-envisioned and put into practice (Merry 2006). In this article, we follow Merry’s direction to focus ‘on the social processes of human rights implementation and resistance’ (ibid: 39) by highlighting for scholars and activists preliminary conceptual and programmatic conclusions from these popular—or ‘common sense’—conceptions of the right to food. The research on which this article draws was undertaken in a tradition of participatory research that aims to uncover and amplify people’s own categories and meanings in relation to policy and practice (Chambers 2002). The research was part of a larger, longitudinal, multilevel, mixed methods inquiry into the effects of food price volatility in ten countries in South and South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America during 2011–15 (Hossain 2015). Its unusual scale for a predominantly qualitative study means it offers valuable breadth of insight into processes of global change as they emerge out of the interaction of multiple local instances and experiences. It also suffers from the problems of scale in large scale qualitative research, including the interpretative challenges of multi-sited, multilingual research undertaken by multiple actors (Hossain and Scott-Villiers 2018). The article thus draws chiefly from broad findings generated by discussions around the following broad questions: what do people think about their right to food? What do they believe they can claim, and from whom? Based on this qualitative research we show that a strong ‘common sense’ approach to the right to food can be discerned across these settings, and that this is likely to shape the realization of the right to food in instructive ways. Among the most significant findings, the research highlighted how many popular conceptions took on natural rights justifications and integrated these within relevant moral and social frameworks. This, coupled with an emphasis on the right to food as the freedom to earn, and on non-state institutions of marriage, kin and community as primary duty bearers, did not clearly signal an expectation of public action or legal responsibilities under usual conditions. Yet in times of mass food insecurity, people from all backgrounds appeared to hold public authorities responsible for acting, and evaluated them accordingly. The law and the state featured prominently in perceptions of the right to food where it had been (recently) constitutionally guaranteed (Bolivia, Guatemala and Kenya): there people spoke of the right to food in relation to the very real challenges of claiming rights or holding governmental duty bearers to account. Past episodes of dearth, at least those that remained in the public memory, and current political and electoral struggles over food-related matters also influenced what the right to food meant, and for whom. The article analyses these findings to identify points at which popular and human rights conceptions connect or diverge, identifying both specific and general implications for research and activism on the right to food. The article is organized as follows. The next section sets out the rationale for an exploration of popular conceptions of the right to food, identifying its rise to prominence in global policy, the challenge of realization (including vernacularization) and the significance of alternative framings in contemporary struggles over food. The following section discusses the methodology used, describing both its significant limitations and its value to the questions at hand. The article then goes on to discuss findings about the origins and meanings of the right to food, and about duty bearers, claims-making and political space. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the implications of this ‘common sense’ approach to thinking about the right to food, highlighting its contribution and indicating areas for further analysis. The right to food in national and international law and policy discourse The human right to food has risen to prominence in international and national policy discourse in a context of global food price crises, the persistence of high levels of hunger (870 million people in 2011–2013 (FAO 2013)) and widespread under-nutrition (Black et al. 2013). This rise has breathed life into slumbering international and national laws on social and economic human rights, which had been secondary to the political and civil rights privileged by neoliberal development (Englund 2006; Howard 1983). The legal basis for the right to food is plain enough: the right to adequate food is recognized under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as interpreted by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in its General Comment No. 12 on the right to adequate food (UN CESCR 1999) (De Schutter 2012). The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) also recognize the right to food (Knuth and Vidar 2011). These legal rights are often misinterpreted as implying that states are responsible for feeding their citizens, when under its Article 2, the ICESCR places states parties under legally binding obligations to take steps, to the maximum of their available resources, to achieve progressively the full realization of the economic and social rights in that Covenant at three levels. At a primary level, states should respect individuals’ own resources for their free use to satisfy their needs. At a secondary level, states must provide active protection against other subjects, in particular against powerful economic interests. At the tertiary level, the state has the obligation to facilitate opportunities by which the rights listed can be enjoyed or, when the other obligations are insufficiently met, to provide such opportunities and thus fulfil the rights (Eide 1998). One way of acting on the obligations of international instruments is by enshrining the right to food in domestic law. The constitutions of 23 countries explicitly reference the right to food, but it is justiciable only if enshrined in bills of rights or fundamental rights sections (for example, Brazil, Kenya, South Africa) (Knuth and Vidar 2011). Others guarantee broader human rights (for instance to development) within which ‘according to their normal meaning in international law’, the right is implicit (ibid: 16). Countries that have ratified international human rights laws and conventions that recognize the right to food such as the ICESCR and CEDAW are legally bound by their provisions. In a few countries (for example Argentina, Venezuela) international law is automatically superior or equivalent to constitutional law, whereas in most it is outranked by constitutional law, although superior or equivalent to national statutory law (ibid.). Despite its strong anchoring in international law, it is only since the 1996 World Food Summit that the right to food has had policy traction. In 2004, the General Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) recommended ‘Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security’. Since 2000, a UN Special Rapporteur has been mandated with promoting the full realization of the right to food through measures at national, regional and international levels. Olivier De Schutter, the Special Rapporteur from 2008–2014, posits the right to food as more than a legal instrument expressing an ambition to achieve citizens’ freedom from hunger, and as a ‘compass to ensure that policies are geared towards alleviating hunger and malnutrition’ (De Schutter, undated), explicitly arguing that the right to food is a tool for accountability (De Schutter 2012). Where enshrined in constitutional, statutory and subordinate laws or through established jurisprudence, the right to food expresses not just a desire to achieve freedom from hunger, it also explicitly sets out the responsibilities of governments to ensure such outcomes. ‘Vernacularizing’ the right to food There has to date been relatively little attention to what Claeys describes as ‘human rights in their pre-codified form’ (2012: 845), particularly in relation to the right to food. This is a significant gap in knowledge, as we know that implementation of international human rights does not involve a simple transfer of universal facts or rules, but encounters local interests, world views, and philosophies and is transformed in the interchange. Merry speaks of ‘vernacularization’, or the process through which ideas of international human rights ‘travel to small communities [becoming] vernacularized, or adapted to local institutions and meanings’ (2006: 39). Vernacularization implies not merely translation in a linguistic sense, but ‘indigenization’, so that ideas from transnational spheres gain local associations and meanings, and so become framed as political concerns with local resonance (Goldstein 2013: 111). Political action is always necessary to give universal human rights historically- and context-specific content and shape (Tsing 2005), and that action both shapes and is shaped by the movement of ideas. We also know that human rights translations not only draw on local vocabularies but are accommodated within existing ‘norms governing entitlements, roles and identities’ (Madhok 2009: 4). South Asian human rights discourse, for instance, is translated with reference to ancient notions of rights such as the concept of haq, used across the Arabic world and in parts of Asia. Haq has historically connoted equity, social justice, and innate possession: that which ‘“belongs to one” and which must be “snatched back” if taken’ (ibid: 16). Concepts of haq vary, but mainly contrast a legal sense of right (or adhikar) with a fuller sense of citizenship as a ‘positive notion of rights such as the provisions required to live a life of dignity’ (ibid: 41). Popular movements and struggles around food are particularly important sources of ideas about the right to food. Some of these conceptions have successfully ‘translated up’ (Claeys 2012), influencing transnational debates about the right to food. One good example is the conception of rights to food sovereignty, or the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity. We have the right to produce our own food in our own territory. (Patel 2009: 665, citing La Via Campesina) From the rich literature on agrarian movements we have gained important insights into how concepts of local control and peasants’ rights challenge or align with international human rights in the process of vernacularization; the evidence indicates that the traffic in ideas is two-way, and that domestic and popular conceptions of the right have often predominated in successful efforts at implementing it (see e.g. Claeys 2015; Shawki 2015; Hadiprayitno 2015). In the best known example, in India, the Right to Food Movement remained driven by domestic concerns and thinking, and consistently protected its agenda from transnational influences. Its successes at home have meant the need to translate Indian lessons about the right to food back up to the transnational sphere (Hertel 2016). Alternative perspectives on the right to food also include what has been termed ‘moral economy’ conceptions of responsibility for tackling food crises. Populations facing crises of subsistence in times of economic adjustment have historically taken to food riots and other disruptive protest to claim moral economic limits on market freedoms to profit from dearth, and to assign public authorities clear roles for enforcing their rights to subsistence (Bohstedt 2016). Moral economy views that assign clear roles for governments in food markets remain common in contemporary societies undergoing rapid transitions; these are likely to shape and be shaped by ideas of the right to food as a matter of international law (Hossain and Kalita 2014; Hossain and Scott-Villiers 2017). Approach and methodology The original research presented here paid close attention to common or shared frames of understanding of the right to food, including customary and faith-based conceptions of rights, moral economic ideas about the role of the state in food crises, and concepts of food sovereignty. We would expect conceptions to be influenced by a range of additional factors, such as people’s relationships to food, in particular whether their concerns are primarily as producers or as consumers; the role of their state in promoting or protecting food security; recent public debates about constitutional reforms that have addressed economic and social rights; and the history of food insecurity in the country, in particular whether a major food crisis had created an ‘anti-famine social contract’ (De Waal 1996). With these probable influences on the right to food in mind, the research asked what, if anything, does the right to food mean to people at risk of hunger? Where does a right to food originate? What responsibilities does it imply? Data was collected to explore these questions in selected rural, urban and peri-urban locations in low and middle income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America in 2013, a time when, around the world, people had been facing high and volatile food prices since the global food crisis of 2008 (McMichael 2009; Lang 2010; Clapp 2009). The research was part of a ‘Big Qual’ study that mixed methods across multiple sites to build a longitudinal and locally grounded analysis of processes of global change (Hossain and Scott-Villiers 2018). The people with whom the research engaged had a range of occupations and livelihoods as described below, but all shared a degree of precariousness with respect to incomes and domestic food security, and had faced hardship since the global food crisis as a result of reliance on food markets that had been exposed to global market volatilities. The populations were broadly divided into food producing (rural) and net consuming (urban or peri-urban) areas, but embedded in otherwise distinctively different local and national food systems, which are compared and discussed in the analysis below. Table 1 summarizes key features of the communities involved in the research, including the extent of undernourishment in the country as a whole and the constitutional provisions on the right to food, which illustrate the strength and articulation of this right in national legislation. Note that while Bolivia and Kenya explicitly recognize the right to food, in Guatemala the recognition is explicit, but only for minors and the elderly. In four of the nine countries, the right to food is expressed more weakly, through guaranteeing other human rights in which the right to food is implicit according to their usual meaning in international law. The remaining countries, though not recognizing the right to food explicitly in their constitution, make explicit reference to the right to food in the objectives or directive principles of state policy. These are statements of principle, often representing societal aspirations, and may guide government action, but do not provide for individual or legal rights. In several countries, international law—including the right to food—has primacy over national legislation. Table 1. Key characteristics of research sites Country Undernourish-ment (% of population) Constitutional provisions on the right to fooda Characteristics of research communities Bangladesh 16 An explicit directive principle of state Dhamuirhat, Naogaon (North-West). Paddy cultivation is a key source of livelihood, but land ownership is concentrated and most people earn a living through agricultural labour. Non-agricultural sectors (e.g. brick mills) are growing fast. This is an area with a high concentration of people living with extreme poverty. Koyra, Khulna (South). Until hit by cyclone Aila in 2009, predominantly a rice producing region. Now more forest-based livelihoods and shrimp cultivation for export. Notun Bazaar (Dhaka city). Most people are climate refugees from the south who lost agricultural land due to river erosion. Most retain links to rural districts, including family and property, but chiefly dependent on petty trading, waste-processing, transport and domestic labour services, and ready-made garments factory labour Bolivia 21 Explicitly, direct and general provision under constitutional law; also implicitly provided for under broader rights Pirhuas, Cochabamba. This rural community has experienced reverse migration in recent years. Subsistence farming has been traditionally important, but dairy production is increasingly important, and there are rising concerns about the impact of agrofood industries in the area. In Kami (town) in Cochabamba valley, many research participants were former miners, while others work in construction or quarries. Some retain rural connections. Burkina Faso 25 Implicit constitutional provision International law is equal to or given primacy over constitutional law In rural Nessemtenga, in Sanmatenga Province, small and subsistence agriculture predominates, but in 2012 people were struggling after several seasons of poor rainfall. Young people, particularly men, have moved away to the gold mines. In the town of Kaya, also in Sanmatenga Province, the main livelihoods involve livestock and agriculture, alongside small businesses and crafts. Ethiopia 37 Implicit in broader rights, but explicit as a directive principle of state policy The community in Eastern Oromia is a dryland region customarily dependent on small-scale subsistence farming, but with rapidly growing interest in irrigation-fed agriculture and ‘model’ farming, and local farmers have enjoyed some recent successes in vegetable production for the market. In Kolfe sub-city, in Addis Ababa, most people are artisans and wage workers, although a growing proportion rely on international migrant remittances. Guatemala 31 Explicit direct and general, but also implicit in broader rights; also implicit in that international law has primacy or equality Chugüexá Primero is an area in the mountainous west, customarily dependent on corn and bean production for own consumption. Fewer people rely on agriculture than in the past, as output increasingly fails to meet consumption needs. The Quechua-speaking population also depends on tailoring, among other jobs. Chichicastenango is a market town in a region dominated by small-scale and subsistence agriculture. The large and famous local market is visited by people from far and wide for its agricultural produce. Kenya 26 Explicit direct and general constitutional provision Lango Baya is a drought-prone region in Coastal Province that has in the past been reliant on small-scale subsistence agriculture. In recent years, irrigation-fed production for own consumption and of vegetables for sale have shifted attitudes to farming. But success depends on access to land near the river. Mukuru, in Nairobi. Most of the residents are long-term city-dwellers, but some are involved in urban gardening and others retain connections with rural homes of origin. Indonesia 9 Explicit as a directive principle, and implicit because international law has primacy or is equal In Cianjur in Java, the vast majority of the population live from agriculture, mainly rice production, but land ownership is skewed and most agricultural labour is wage work. Increasingly people work in the growing number of nearby factories catering to local or international markets. Banjar, in Kalimantan, is a mainly rubber-producing area of transmigrants from Java, highly integrated into and vulnerable to the global commodities markets. There is also some mining work. In Bekasi, peri-urban Jakarta, many people are migrants from East or Central Java, working in the huge industrial area that produces goods for domestic and export markets. People from the region tend to rent out properties or provide services to factory workers. Pakistan 17 Implicit as part of broader rights, but also explicitly a directive principle of state The people of rural Dadu, in Sindh, were greatly affected when the Indus river flooded in 2010 and many people fled. They had been mainly wheat farmers. Gulshan-e-Iqbal in Karachi is a diverse area with sections of the local community who are recent migrants after the devastating 2010 floods. Some maintain connections to rural life and homes, but most families rely on local services or other employment. Zambia 43 Explicit as part of directive principles of state In Chikwanda, Northern Province, agriculture is the main activity, but predominantly small-scale and subsistence-oriented, and access to fertilizer without subsidies is unaffordable for the smallholder farmers in the area. In Kabwata in Lusaka, people are long-term city residents, many connected to agricultural production through their work as petty traders and food vendors. People perform a range of other services and jobs in this mixed neighbourhood. Country Undernourish-ment (% of population) Constitutional provisions on the right to fooda Characteristics of research communities Bangladesh 16 An explicit directive principle of state Dhamuirhat, Naogaon (North-West). Paddy cultivation is a key source of livelihood, but land ownership is concentrated and most people earn a living through agricultural labour. Non-agricultural sectors (e.g. brick mills) are growing fast. This is an area with a high concentration of people living with extreme poverty. Koyra, Khulna (South). Until hit by cyclone Aila in 2009, predominantly a rice producing region. Now more forest-based livelihoods and shrimp cultivation for export. Notun Bazaar (Dhaka city). Most people are climate refugees from the south who lost agricultural land due to river erosion. Most retain links to rural districts, including family and property, but chiefly dependent on petty trading, waste-processing, transport and domestic labour services, and ready-made garments factory labour Bolivia 21 Explicitly, direct and general provision under constitutional law; also implicitly provided for under broader rights Pirhuas, Cochabamba. This rural community has experienced reverse migration in recent years. Subsistence farming has been traditionally important, but dairy production is increasingly important, and there are rising concerns about the impact of agrofood industries in the area. In Kami (town) in Cochabamba valley, many research participants were former miners, while others work in construction or quarries. Some retain rural connections. Burkina Faso 25 Implicit constitutional provision International law is equal to or given primacy over constitutional law In rural Nessemtenga, in Sanmatenga Province, small and subsistence agriculture predominates, but in 2012 people were struggling after several seasons of poor rainfall. Young people, particularly men, have moved away to the gold mines. In the town of Kaya, also in Sanmatenga Province, the main livelihoods involve livestock and agriculture, alongside small businesses and crafts. Ethiopia 37 Implicit in broader rights, but explicit as a directive principle of state policy The community in Eastern Oromia is a dryland region customarily dependent on small-scale subsistence farming, but with rapidly growing interest in irrigation-fed agriculture and ‘model’ farming, and local farmers have enjoyed some recent successes in vegetable production for the market. In Kolfe sub-city, in Addis Ababa, most people are artisans and wage workers, although a growing proportion rely on international migrant remittances. Guatemala 31 Explicit direct and general, but also implicit in broader rights; also implicit in that international law has primacy or equality Chugüexá Primero is an area in the mountainous west, customarily dependent on corn and bean production for own consumption. Fewer people rely on agriculture than in the past, as output increasingly fails to meet consumption needs. The Quechua-speaking population also depends on tailoring, among other jobs. Chichicastenango is a market town in a region dominated by small-scale and subsistence agriculture. The large and famous local market is visited by people from far and wide for its agricultural produce. Kenya 26 Explicit direct and general constitutional provision Lango Baya is a drought-prone region in Coastal Province that has in the past been reliant on small-scale subsistence agriculture. In recent years, irrigation-fed production for own consumption and of vegetables for sale have shifted attitudes to farming. But success depends on access to land near the river. Mukuru, in Nairobi. Most of the residents are long-term city-dwellers, but some are involved in urban gardening and others retain connections with rural homes of origin. Indonesia 9 Explicit as a directive principle, and implicit because international law has primacy or is equal In Cianjur in Java, the vast majority of the population live from agriculture, mainly rice production, but land ownership is skewed and most agricultural labour is wage work. Increasingly people work in the growing number of nearby factories catering to local or international markets. Banjar, in Kalimantan, is a mainly rubber-producing area of transmigrants from Java, highly integrated into and vulnerable to the global commodities markets. There is also some mining work. In Bekasi, peri-urban Jakarta, many people are migrants from East or Central Java, working in the huge industrial area that produces goods for domestic and export markets. People from the region tend to rent out properties or provide services to factory workers. Pakistan 17 Implicit as part of broader rights, but also explicitly a directive principle of state The people of rural Dadu, in Sindh, were greatly affected when the Indus river flooded in 2010 and many people fled. They had been mainly wheat farmers. Gulshan-e-Iqbal in Karachi is a diverse area with sections of the local community who are recent migrants after the devastating 2010 floods. Some maintain connections to rural life and homes, but most families rely on local services or other employment. Zambia 43 Explicit as part of directive principles of state In Chikwanda, Northern Province, agriculture is the main activity, but predominantly small-scale and subsistence-oriented, and access to fertilizer without subsidies is unaffordable for the smallholder farmers in the area. In Kabwata in Lusaka, people are long-term city residents, many connected to agricultural production through their work as petty traders and food vendors. People perform a range of other services and jobs in this mixed neighbourhood. a Knuth and Vidar (2011) Table 1. Key characteristics of research sites Country Undernourish-ment (% of population) Constitutional provisions on the right to fooda Characteristics of research communities Bangladesh 16 An explicit directive principle of state Dhamuirhat, Naogaon (North-West). Paddy cultivation is a key source of livelihood, but land ownership is concentrated and most people earn a living through agricultural labour. Non-agricultural sectors (e.g. brick mills) are growing fast. This is an area with a high concentration of people living with extreme poverty. Koyra, Khulna (South). Until hit by cyclone Aila in 2009, predominantly a rice producing region. Now more forest-based livelihoods and shrimp cultivation for export. Notun Bazaar (Dhaka city). Most people are climate refugees from the south who lost agricultural land due to river erosion. Most retain links to rural districts, including family and property, but chiefly dependent on petty trading, waste-processing, transport and domestic labour services, and ready-made garments factory labour Bolivia 21 Explicitly, direct and general provision under constitutional law; also implicitly provided for under broader rights Pirhuas, Cochabamba. This rural community has experienced reverse migration in recent years. Subsistence farming has been traditionally important, but dairy production is increasingly important, and there are rising concerns about the impact of agrofood industries in the area. In Kami (town) in Cochabamba valley, many research participants were former miners, while others work in construction or quarries. Some retain rural connections. Burkina Faso 25 Implicit constitutional provision International law is equal to or given primacy over constitutional law In rural Nessemtenga, in Sanmatenga Province, small and subsistence agriculture predominates, but in 2012 people were struggling after several seasons of poor rainfall. Young people, particularly men, have moved away to the gold mines. In the town of Kaya, also in Sanmatenga Province, the main livelihoods involve livestock and agriculture, alongside small businesses and crafts. Ethiopia 37 Implicit in broader rights, but explicit as a directive principle of state policy The community in Eastern Oromia is a dryland region customarily dependent on small-scale subsistence farming, but with rapidly growing interest in irrigation-fed agriculture and ‘model’ farming, and local farmers have enjoyed some recent successes in vegetable production for the market. In Kolfe sub-city, in Addis Ababa, most people are artisans and wage workers, although a growing proportion rely on international migrant remittances. Guatemala 31 Explicit direct and general, but also implicit in broader rights; also implicit in that international law has primacy or equality Chugüexá Primero is an area in the mountainous west, customarily dependent on corn and bean production for own consumption. Fewer people rely on agriculture than in the past, as output increasingly fails to meet consumption needs. The Quechua-speaking population also depends on tailoring, among other jobs. Chichicastenango is a market town in a region dominated by small-scale and subsistence agriculture. The large and famous local market is visited by people from far and wide for its agricultural produce. Kenya 26 Explicit direct and general constitutional provision Lango Baya is a drought-prone region in Coastal Province that has in the past been reliant on small-scale subsistence agriculture. In recent years, irrigation-fed production for own consumption and of vegetables for sale have shifted attitudes to farming. But success depends on access to land near the river. Mukuru, in Nairobi. Most of the residents are long-term city-dwellers, but some are involved in urban gardening and others retain connections with rural homes of origin. Indonesia 9 Explicit as a directive principle, and implicit because international law has primacy or is equal In Cianjur in Java, the vast majority of the population live from agriculture, mainly rice production, but land ownership is skewed and most agricultural labour is wage work. Increasingly people work in the growing number of nearby factories catering to local or international markets. Banjar, in Kalimantan, is a mainly rubber-producing area of transmigrants from Java, highly integrated into and vulnerable to the global commodities markets. There is also some mining work. In Bekasi, peri-urban Jakarta, many people are migrants from East or Central Java, working in the huge industrial area that produces goods for domestic and export markets. People from the region tend to rent out properties or provide services to factory workers. Pakistan 17 Implicit as part of broader rights, but also explicitly a directive principle of state The people of rural Dadu, in Sindh, were greatly affected when the Indus river flooded in 2010 and many people fled. They had been mainly wheat farmers. Gulshan-e-Iqbal in Karachi is a diverse area with sections of the local community who are recent migrants after the devastating 2010 floods. Some maintain connections to rural life and homes, but most families rely on local services or other employment. Zambia 43 Explicit as part of directive principles of state In Chikwanda, Northern Province, agriculture is the main activity, but predominantly small-scale and subsistence-oriented, and access to fertilizer without subsidies is unaffordable for the smallholder farmers in the area. In Kabwata in Lusaka, people are long-term city residents, many connected to agricultural production through their work as petty traders and food vendors. People perform a range of other services and jobs in this mixed neighbourhood. Country Undernourish-ment (% of population) Constitutional provisions on the right to fooda Characteristics of research communities Bangladesh 16 An explicit directive principle of state Dhamuirhat, Naogaon (North-West). Paddy cultivation is a key source of livelihood, but land ownership is concentrated and most people earn a living through agricultural labour. Non-agricultural sectors (e.g. brick mills) are growing fast. This is an area with a high concentration of people living with extreme poverty. Koyra, Khulna (South). Until hit by cyclone Aila in 2009, predominantly a rice producing region. Now more forest-based livelihoods and shrimp cultivation for export. Notun Bazaar (Dhaka city). Most people are climate refugees from the south who lost agricultural land due to river erosion. Most retain links to rural districts, including family and property, but chiefly dependent on petty trading, waste-processing, transport and domestic labour services, and ready-made garments factory labour Bolivia 21 Explicitly, direct and general provision under constitutional law; also implicitly provided for under broader rights Pirhuas, Cochabamba. This rural community has experienced reverse migration in recent years. Subsistence farming has been traditionally important, but dairy production is increasingly important, and there are rising concerns about the impact of agrofood industries in the area. In Kami (town) in Cochabamba valley, many research participants were former miners, while others work in construction or quarries. Some retain rural connections. Burkina Faso 25 Implicit constitutional provision International law is equal to or given primacy over constitutional law In rural Nessemtenga, in Sanmatenga Province, small and subsistence agriculture predominates, but in 2012 people were struggling after several seasons of poor rainfall. Young people, particularly men, have moved away to the gold mines. In the town of Kaya, also in Sanmatenga Province, the main livelihoods involve livestock and agriculture, alongside small businesses and crafts. Ethiopia 37 Implicit in broader rights, but explicit as a directive principle of state policy The community in Eastern Oromia is a dryland region customarily dependent on small-scale subsistence farming, but with rapidly growing interest in irrigation-fed agriculture and ‘model’ farming, and local farmers have enjoyed some recent successes in vegetable production for the market. In Kolfe sub-city, in Addis Ababa, most people are artisans and wage workers, although a growing proportion rely on international migrant remittances. Guatemala 31 Explicit direct and general, but also implicit in broader rights; also implicit in that international law has primacy or equality Chugüexá Primero is an area in the mountainous west, customarily dependent on corn and bean production for own consumption. Fewer people rely on agriculture than in the past, as output increasingly fails to meet consumption needs. The Quechua-speaking population also depends on tailoring, among other jobs. Chichicastenango is a market town in a region dominated by small-scale and subsistence agriculture. The large and famous local market is visited by people from far and wide for its agricultural produce. Kenya 26 Explicit direct and general constitutional provision Lango Baya is a drought-prone region in Coastal Province that has in the past been reliant on small-scale subsistence agriculture. In recent years, irrigation-fed production for own consumption and of vegetables for sale have shifted attitudes to farming. But success depends on access to land near the river. Mukuru, in Nairobi. Most of the residents are long-term city-dwellers, but some are involved in urban gardening and others retain connections with rural homes of origin. Indonesia 9 Explicit as a directive principle, and implicit because international law has primacy or is equal In Cianjur in Java, the vast majority of the population live from agriculture, mainly rice production, but land ownership is skewed and most agricultural labour is wage work. Increasingly people work in the growing number of nearby factories catering to local or international markets. Banjar, in Kalimantan, is a mainly rubber-producing area of transmigrants from Java, highly integrated into and vulnerable to the global commodities markets. There is also some mining work. In Bekasi, peri-urban Jakarta, many people are migrants from East or Central Java, working in the huge industrial area that produces goods for domestic and export markets. People from the region tend to rent out properties or provide services to factory workers. Pakistan 17 Implicit as part of broader rights, but also explicitly a directive principle of state The people of rural Dadu, in Sindh, were greatly affected when the Indus river flooded in 2010 and many people fled. They had been mainly wheat farmers. Gulshan-e-Iqbal in Karachi is a diverse area with sections of the local community who are recent migrants after the devastating 2010 floods. Some maintain connections to rural life and homes, but most families rely on local services or other employment. Zambia 43 Explicit as part of directive principles of state In Chikwanda, Northern Province, agriculture is the main activity, but predominantly small-scale and subsistence-oriented, and access to fertilizer without subsidies is unaffordable for the smallholder farmers in the area. In Kabwata in Lusaka, people are long-term city residents, many connected to agricultural production through their work as petty traders and food vendors. People perform a range of other services and jobs in this mixed neighbourhood. a Knuth and Vidar (2011) In selecting a small number of sites from a relatively large sample of countries the research aimed for an illustrative sense of key common influences on conceptions of the right to food. Research tools in each of the locations included the collection of community background and context data, longitudinal household case studies (200 in total) on work, food consumption, and formal and informal social protection; focus group discussions with occupation or social groups (for example agricultural wage workers, food traders, youth); and key informant interviews with local officials, NGO staff, religious or community leaders, local business people, and politicians. In total, the data on which this article draws derives from interviews with 400 household members and key informants and 88 focus group discussions, involving a total of 1,200 people. The qualitative data were written up and translated in each country, and then coded using NVivo qualitative analysis software. Themes were derived from the codes and analysed against the questions and propositions of the research. A key limitation of this exercise is that the results are sensitive to the approach taken in each setting and language. The approach was not ethnographic or entirely open-ended, but sought to identify locally shared understandings. The scale of the task meant research activities were divided and delegated, with country teams undertaking fieldwork, building on methodological guidelines and tools developed by the central team. Translation and qualitative analysis was undertaken both at the country level and across the countries, and represented its own challenges of ‘vernacularization’. Some 14 languages were spoken across these sites, so it was necessary to use a shared set of concepts and terms in each country. Researchers interpreted and adapted these concepts from ‘international English’ to have relevance in each local context. This made sense given that the discourse and practice of human rights, and of a right to food specifically, come from the international context. But it was clear that in the effort to make comparative sense, ideas and nuances were lost in translation. Food rights as natural rights in the moral and national community The challenge of ‘vernacularizing’ the right to food was highlighted by the uneven nature of discussions about ‘the right to food’ across contexts. In Viet Nam, the country researchers concluded that the right to food had insufficient local resonance in this socialist state to merit specific attention. In the Indonesian sites, participants found the language of a ‘right’ to food unfamiliar and difficult to grasp (see also Hadiprayitno 2010). Although Indonesia faces severe problems of malnourishment, hunger in the sense of calorie deficits is not widely recognized as a significant problem in this middle-income country. Those who spoke about the right to food to the Indonesian research team framed it as the ‘right to be free from starvation’; they were chiefly older respondents, who had personal recollection of episodes of food insecurity dating back to colonial rule.1 One reason many people found it difficult to conceptualize a ‘right to food’ appeared to be the view of food as a natural right—a physiological requirement for existence, and therefore innate to all humans. Mr PK, 75, a retired nurse from the town of Kaya in Burkina Faso, explained it succinctly: ‘if I am not entitled to eat it means that I do not have the right to exist’. But in the responsibilities it entails, the right to food was not so much an individual right as one most meaningfully connected to people’s identity, place, and position in the moral and national community. Mr TS, 42, a Mayan judge and farmer in Chichicastenango in highland Guatemala, explained the foundational nature of the right to food: Those who are hungry cannot work, cannot walk, and cannot think … they are like fainting, sick. If you are not hungry, you are happy, quiet … If we eat well we are quiet, we feel happy all the time, perform with all of our energy, otherwise we are sleepy, lazy … The law says that we have the right, but to buy with what? If there are no jobs? The high cost of life and the fact that there are no jobs, and then we do not eat well … The circularity described here, of chronic hunger breeding lethargy preventing people from working to feed themselves, draws attention to the innate and self-evident nature of the right to food in order to flourish. As an agricultural cooperative member in rural Chikwanda, in Zambia’s northern province, explained it: ‘right to food means a right to health, a right to education and a right to life. Without food, you can’t get an education, you can’t have good health, you can’t have life’. Mrs FK, a 60-year-old washerwoman in the town of Kami in Bolivia, similarly thought that the right meant ‘that people can eat what they need to be in good health’. Where people had a particularly strong sense of their right to food, religious faith was frequently invoked to explain its origins, and as the source of human equality in respect of basic rights. In Karachi, 41-year-old Mrs MK, mother of five and foster carer of four, explained that: ‘Everyone has the right to food because Allah has created everyone equally so it does not matter if a person is rich or poor, man or woman, all have equal rights to eat food.’ In a clearly moral understanding of the right to food, the family was the primary source of the right to food for children in all sites: helpless infants had the right to food because their parents had brought them into the world. In Pakistan, women’s rights to food also arose from familial, in that case, marital, relationships. The view in these communities in Karachi and rural Dadu, Sindh, was that as providers of unpaid care and as mothers, wives had rights to food. A group of teenaged girls explained the hierarchy of needs and responsibilities thus: Allah has created us and he is our sustainer. Everyone is entitled to have adequate food. Muslims and non-Muslims, all by virtue of being human beings, have the right to a proper diet. The children have their parents to look up to and ask for food. The wife looks up to her husband. Among interviewees in Burkina Faso, common notions about the right to food included agreement that although parents and families played the primary role, a right to food presupposed community solidarity, and the specific requirement to help its members in times of crisis, with the rich particularly enjoined to do so. Mr SK, 30, an agricultural extension worker, describes such rights as ‘the basis of African solidarity’, in a context in which hunger was a real and present danger. Membership of the moral community is important: for Mrs FH, a 70-year-old widow living in the extremely poor region of Naogaon in north-western Bangladesh, the right to food arose from her vulnerability, but depended on her virtue: If I can’t work, I must ask for help from [other] members of the society. I’m old and feeble, they must help me. I beg but I don’t steal. I will ask from people and they will give something to eat. This is my right. The idea that the right to food incurs responsibilities to make the best effort possible to feed oneself was reasonably widespread: there was no assumption that such a right implied people could lead a life of ease. A theme of self-blame was heard in the mountains in Chugüexá Primero in Guatemala, a community of K’iche’ speaking indigenous people, where people blamed hunger partly on alcoholism among household heads. Several Ethiopian respondents similarly moralized the right to food, speaking of it as about the right to feed oneself and one’s family through the right to work. But while common, the view that ‘no one should starve’, implying last-resort action by the state, was also held. In relation to Ethiopia, an emphasis on the right to food as originating in the right to work and feed oneself may reflect the latter-day reflections of popular responses to collectivization policies under the Derg. For food farmers in particular, ideas about the right to food are more than likely to reflect this history, and it is possible that, rather than a narrative of blaming the hungry, the emphasis on the right to work reflects a pushing back against authoritarian collectivist agrarian policies (Belete et al. 1991; Omiti et al. 2000). Rights under the constitution In Bolivia, researchers uncovered a sense of disappointed expectations that the incorporation of the right to food in the constitution had not yielded measurable change. In the town of Kami, Bolivia, people rejected the idea of a right to food not because they did not believe they had it in theory, but because they felt it was not realized in practice. Mrs PE, a 78-year-old retired teacher, and her husband criticized the state for this failure, but also the increasing individualization of society: ‘No, no one cares about people who do not have enough resources to eat … [there] no longer exists cooperation between people as there was before.’ Her neighbour Mrs NC, at 65 retired from the mining industry, echoed this view, arguing: No, no right is recognized, especially for older people who are left to their fate, no one cares if they eat or do not. My neighbour is a grandmother alone, and nobody cares about her, she has no pension or any income, she is going through difficult times, sometimes she doesn’t eat. In the Guatemalan research sites, anyone who had an idea of the right to food, but also others for whom language of the ‘right to food’ was unfamiliar, were all clear that under their constitution, Guatemalans were supposed to have basic economic rights. A number of people had heard about this on the television, but it had come no nearer to affecting their lives than that.2 As 21-year-old family planning promoter Ms CL, in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands, said, ‘I think that over here, each person looks for a way to survive, there is nobody who comes here and tells us “look, everybody has the right to food, come here everybody and have some of this”. I think that everybody struggles to survive.’ To Mr TA, a 48-year-old caretaker from Chichicastenango, the basis of the right to food was clear enough: It is even written in our constitution of the republic that the government is responsible for satisfying all the necessities of the nation … The law is written there, the problem is that they hardly make it happen. Because help and aid programmes do come here, but to reach the people who really need them does not happen. The constitution of the republic says that the government should watch over the feeding of the nation, but definitely they do not do it. A critical factor, the entire family agreed, was that their distance from the political centre excluded them from such help, even when they actively sought assistance with livelihoods or jobs. Guatemalan citizens knew the law made provision regarding food security, even if many did not know of ‘the right to food’ as such.3 Several people in Chugüexá Primero in Guatemala commented that just having the knowledge of their rights was worthwhile, even if they were not realized, because it provided at least the basis on which to make demands. Knowledge of rights, even if they exist chiefly in the statute books, also mattered in Kenya. Mr IK, 35, a greengrocer in Coast Province in Kenya, said proudly: ‘I have human rights because I am a human being and a citizen of Kenya. I know about them because I heard them when they were campaigning during the referendum.’4 A focus group discussion with informal sector workers in Lango Baya, in Kenya’s drought-stricken Coastal Province, highlighted the interaction of faith with beliefs about the law and the state, soon after the new constitution guaranteeing the right to food was adopted: Q: Do hungry people have any rights to food here? In unison, the participants said that the hungry in their community have a right to food. MJ (28, motorbike rider): We have the rights. However, we know little about them because we have not read and there is also ignorance. Q: Where do these rights come from? How do you know about them? The participants felt that the rights to food come from God and from the government. PK (44, community organizer): The rights come from God. He gives us the knowledge of our rights. Our leaders are given the ability to give us the rights. NJ (24, unemployed): The rights come from God. The government oppresses the poor. NM (38, community mobilizer): The rights come from God but do not get to the intended people. The channel used by the government is bad. NJ: The government knows that everyone has to eat yet it sets high prices for goods. It has also put the rights to food in the constitution. Q: What does a right to food mean to you? NM: It means that Kenya has enough food for its entire people. SM (45, counsellor): It means that it is everyone’s right to eat well. (From transcript of focus group discussion with men in Lango Baya, Coast Province, Kenya, 12 October 2013) These views on the right to food in Kenya confirm that the recent constitutional debates and changes have come to widespread attention (Musembi and Scott-Villiers 2015), including in hunger-prone Lango Baya. Here, speakers claim the ultimate moral authority of God as the source of their right to food, and critique the ‘channels’ through which their leaders go about their duties to realize that right, highlighting corruption in food aid and unregulated food prices as failures, and indicating national self-sufficiency and the right ‘to eat well’ as among the goals. These understandings of the right to food connect concerns of God and nation with the ‘moral economy’ of fair prices and food sovereignty concerns about control over food and its quality. In Dhaka in Bangladesh, women also spoke about their right to food under the constitution, even though the right has not yet been established under the law. As in Indonesia, it was older women who had stronger understandings of their right to food than younger (and better educated) women. Whereas younger women spoke about sharing the burden of earning with their husbands at a time of rising food costs, older women spoke about their rights under the law. This stronger sense of human rights reflects the fact that women in their sixties and older would have experienced the 1974 famine at first hand. It is interesting to note that human rights activists consider the right to food to be weak in Bangladesh, because while the constitution mentions the right to food, it is not justiciable.5 Despite its weak legal status in theory, the right appears to be honoured in practice, and the 1974 famine continues to inform public policy responses to food crises in Bangladesh (Hossain and Jahan 2014). Historical and political struggles over food Bangladeshi respondents highlighted how the content and meaning of the right to food was not static, because the stressors on societies’ food needs change over time, often in response to historical and live political struggles over rights to food. In Dhaka city in Bangladesh, Mr MH, the 50-year-old owner of a small restaurant, contrasted the present situation where ‘[n]obody here is hungry’ with the hungry past, noting that even if people were in general better off today, everyone still had a right to food that needed protecting. But whereas famine has had a significant impact on public policy and the public perception of the right to food in Bangladesh, no such direct comparison could be detected among respondents in Ethiopia, a country with an even more recent history of mass starvation. The Ethiopian constitution makes indirect reference to the right to food as part of a broader set of social rights. Yet Ethiopian people spoke uncertainly, if at all, about the right to food. Some respondents thought it was too much to describe it as ‘a right’ beyond the rights children have to be fed by parents. There was a sense that an enforceable right to food meant moral hazard: people needed to be encouraged to work, and the expectation of free food might make them lazy. A recently appointed district leader said: I think hungry people have both the right and duty to get food. Hungry people have the right to get food through their participation in the job opportunities. The person can apply for a job as a right but can’t ask for food as a right. He or she may ask food from the community not as a right, but just as a need to survive, as kind of requesting help. In other words, people should work if they want to eat, and have ‘the right’ to earn a living. If that fails, they can ask for charity. This meaning of ‘the right to food’ appeared to derive from official sources. In a focus group of farmers in their thirties it was explained that the government had already declared that people should work hard to move out of poverty and hunger, and people have no right to request food while they have hands to work and minds to think. The government educated the people not to seek or beg support in time of hunger or problems. Even then, people felt that in times of disasters, when family, community and other channels had been exhausted, they would have to turn to the government. But to treat the state as the duty bearer was evidently the last resort. Whereas the presence of regular state action to stabilize prices or improve access to food had encouraged Bangladeshis to believe in a realizable right to food, for many respondents in the rural and small town research sites in Burkina Faso it was the absence of government action that had triggered protests about the right to food, notably during the 2008 food crisis (Engels 2014; Sneyd et al. 2013). Across respondents here, whether people were personally at risk of hunger or not, all were clear that the right to food was a natural right, because it presupposed the right to live. In Burkina Faso, common notions about the right to food included agreement that although parents and families played the primary role, a right to food presupposed community solidarity, and the specific requirement to help its members in times of crisis, with the rich particularly enjoined to do so. But defending the right to food was also a state responsibility, with a specific mandate to keep prices affordable. The clarity with which people spoke about the right to food as an innate right appeared to reflect the severity of the problem of hunger in that context, as well as the shared risk of mass hunger from the frequency of drought. Hunger here was a real and present danger, which Burkinabé people had recently experienced and expected to experience again. In Chikwanda, in the farm belt of Zambia’s Northern Province, subsistence farmers highlighted how understanding of their right to food was shaped by the challenges faced both as food producers and as consumers facing volatile prices. There, definitions of the right to food among focus group participants ranged from a purely well-being focus (‘having enough food to eat’; ‘a life without hunger or worry about what to eat the following day’) to access to adequate and nutritious food and the responsibilities of public authorities to distribute food among those who cannot feed themselves. More specifically, the right to food meant ‘a right to affordable fertilizer’ and ‘access to land and cheap inputs [fertilizer and seeds] to help someone grow their own food’. Here, the popular discourse of the right to food has become attached to a live and ongoing local debate about the politicization of agricultural inputs (see Mason et al. 2013), as nearly half of Zambia’s agricultural budgets are used to support fertilizer subsidies. Duty bearers and the political space for claims-making There were differences in the extent to which local authorities were thought to be accountable for hunger, and what happened at the local level influenced how people viewed their rights to food, regardless of the national constitutional or political regime. In Khulna, south-eastern Bangladesh, a region beset with the effects of climate change, people seemed less confident and more critical about public responsibilities to deliver on the right to food than in the other parts of the country. Mr AMS, 45, made his living from what he could gather or glean from the Sundarbans forest. His understanding of the responsibilities for the right to food involved a series of delegations of authority: Food is needed for human subsistence. So food rights are to manage food for human subsistence. Allah is the only owner of managing such types of food. But Allah fills up these rights through someone. So the government is responsible to meet this food right. But the government can’t get the rural news by itself, so the responsibility goes to Chairman and Member [local government representatives] to manage food assistance for the poor. That their remoteness was a factor diluting the political will to realize the right to food was echoed by Bolivian and Guatemalan participants. The closer to the political centre, the more visible to those in power and the more accessible to those with resources, the stronger your rights are in reality. Even people who lacked a clear sense of their right to food had ideas about who was responsible for acting in crises. Mr SB, a 40-year-old weaver and father of three from Kolfe sub-city near Addis Ababa in Ethiopia said: I don’t know [who is accountable for local food security]. I feel that I am the responsible person for the food supply of myself and my household members. Besides, we don’t know whom to ask and where to apply. Is it at wereda, kebele [administrative units] or community level? There is no information. So, I feel that the families are responsible for the situation. If I fall in trouble, my wife has to seek solutions and vice versa. But if the community is in severe hunger, the government has to respond. We are now asking the government officials why the cost of maize and other grains has increased; we raise these issues during the public meetings and discussions. In Guatemala, many participants could not conceive of ‘a right to food’ but nevertheless had some sense that their hunger could not go unaddressed—someone must be responsible for helping them. Some of the poorest people in the highlands town of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango and in Chugüexá Primero in the mountainous rural west faced extreme hunger and chronic malnutrition. Older people like Mr and Mrs PC, 73 and 60 respectively, living in penury on what they could earn from a little portering and handicrafts, had no idea about ‘the right to food’, but they knew what hunger was: Sometimes we only boil some water and if we are thirsty or hungry we drink only water. We are starving most of the time because we do not have money. The food is there at the market but we cannot buy it because we do not have the money to pay for it, so we starve. We starve ourselves; we eat only two or three tamalitos per day. When asked who was responsible for helping people tackle hunger they answered that it was ‘the president’, but that they ‘did not know how to ask for help’. Both continued to try to work, and to seek assistance. A month earlier, Mr PC had found out how to ask for help from local officials who promised to send a social worker, but they were still waiting. Theory and practice with respect to duties to realize the right to food frequently diverged. Mrs QM, a 48-year-old seamstress in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands said: [The right to food comes from] the government I would say … They make promises … but once they are in office they forget about them. They think only about themselves and do not think about the poor people any more … I think that the government should help the poor. There should be job opportunities so we are able to eat. But when asked who was responsible for realizing the right to food, she said unequivocally: The Catholic Church … They provide and visit the poor people. With the money that people give at church, [the priest] puts it all together and then he sends the people from the church to visit the poor and to bring them something, because there are people suffering and they do not have anything to eat. There was in general a clear schema about the responsibilities for action to make the right to food real. Individuals and families were primarily responsible, but communities and other local organizations bore responsibility when families were unable to fend for themselves or people lacked such support. In the Indonesian communities in central and western Java, people found the idea of a ‘right to food’ unfamiliar and although they thought the government was ultimately responsible, this was only theoretically so: in practice, these Javanese communities were very clear that most problems of hunger should be addressed by the local community, and that the first person to help someone in trouble was their neighbour. Sixty-year-old Mrs LG from Bekasi in west Java said she had ‘never heard’ of anyone going hungry in that area, not because there was no risk but because the family and community system for helping people was so well developed. Some people mentioned international organizations (NGOs or the Catholic Church) as among those that were responsible for tackling hunger. Some people in Kenya and Burkina Faso thought that their governments had a responsibility to act in part because they had received foreign aid. But references to global faith or international development organizations made an empirical point—they had a role because they were locally present and already active, not because they bore any greater responsibility for addressing hunger. A key area of responsibility for states was to ensure agricultural production was viable, which entailed the right to the necessary support for agriculture. For farmers as far apart as the western highlands of Guatemala and the Northern Province of Zambia, the politicized distribution of fertilizer was mentioned in relation to discussions about the right to food. A community leader in Lango Baya, in the dry Coast Province of Kenya said: Government therefore has the responsibility to make food available and affordable, even if it means buying food from other countries. In addition, the government should make sure that the services offered by the Ministry of Agriculture reach all people on the ground. They should be very strict on the field extension officers who ought to support farmers through farming education and supervision. In Lango Baya, the ongoing drought meant that local chiefs saw the prime responsibility to address the right to food as the provision of irrigation. An international NGO had supported farmers’ access to irrigation in that area, but had left two years previously, underlining that NGOs’ support cannot be demanded as a right. A common theme about governmental responsibilities was the need to stabilize prices and ensure affordable access to food, by stopping exports, keeping sufficient stocks, selling goods in fair price outlets, and providing food assistance. Here the right to food expressly treads on the toes of the market, demanding regulation and intervention. These ideas indicate that despite ideas of moral hazard and dependency, and an emphasis on the right to food as linked to the right to work, there remains a strong reserve of expectation of state action in times of food crisis—primarily if food crisis happens at scale, that is, when entire communities suffer. As noted above, in cases such as Ethiopia, an emphasis on refusing dependence may speak of ideological resistance to authoritarian collectivization strategies in food production; to the extent that they speak of local control and resistance to state intervention, ideas about the right to food can be closer to a food sovereignty agenda than to a legal rights regime. Overall, moral economic principles that hold public authorities responsible for protection against crises of subsistence appear to inform many of these otherwise diverse views forged in very different settings, yet all facing similar global forces within their food systems (see also Vanhaute 2011). Conclusions and implications This article took as its starting point the view that ‘people need to know their rights’ in order to claim them. Knowledge of the right to food involves a process of ‘vernacularization’ (Merry 2006), as international human rights principles translate into national and local realities, and abstract legal principles gain meaning within particular historical, cultural and political contexts. With the aim of shedding light on the process of ‘vernacularizing’ the right to food, this article discussed research findings about popular conceptions of the right to food as part of a large qualitative study in the participatory tradition, aiming to record and amplify the world views of people living with poverty and precarious livelihoods. The people with whom the country research teams spoke were from diverse occupations, geographies, ethnicities, and social, political and food systems, but all faced the necessity to adjust to higher and more volatile food prices, as the 2008 and 2010 global price spikes worked their way through local food systems. While we have attempted to highlight the diversity of perspectives, and connect those to people’s geographic, socioeconomic and political contexts, we have primarily focused on exploring the higher-order findings about the right to food. We cannot treat these views as representative of national or social characteristics, but can be confident that they are indicative of wider currents of thought in the societies of which the speakers are members. It should be noted that the effort to stimulate discussions about the right to food were not successful everywhere, and in the relatively prosperous and food-secure South-East Asian settings of Viet Nam and Indonesia, researchers and respondents both struggled with the abstract concepts, which did not appear to fit their world views and political contexts. However, many people found the language with which to discuss these concepts, which appeared to resonate with their own contexts and everyday concerns. A key conclusion is that there is a discernible ‘common sense’ approach to the right to food—both universal and eminently pragmatic in its grounded assessment of the mechanisms for its realization. This involved a widely shared idea of the universality of the right to food as originating in human nature. Yet when it came to the implications of such a right, this universality fragmented into multiple justifications, based on kin, community, and on the moral and social order governing membership of each. This combination is not without friction: natural rights are moderated by the relationships that individuals have in social and moral orders, so that freedom from hunger is conditional on moral behaviour consistent with membership of the relevant community, in particular on members’ virtue, notably their willingness to work hard to feed themselves and their immediate families. But in this combination of universality (in its source in human nature) and a deeply grounded sense of what that right means in practice, this ‘common sense’ approach to the right to food vividly illustrates Jack Donnelly’s argument about the compatibility of conceptions of human rights as both historically specific and contextually contingent and universal (2013).6 These popular conceptions are also ‘common sense’ in that they appear to be formulated in relation to the assessments of the realistic chances of their realization, and can also (therefore) be read as an inherently political theory, reflecting a realistic sense of how such rights may be claimed. As Donnelly notes, the point of a right is ‘to be entitled to x and thereby to be in a position to press special claims for x’ (1982: 398). To have a legally enshrined right to food thus implies that a claim to protection by the state against hunger and malnutrition is justified within the political order. Nevertheless, our research found that in many contexts where constitutions and national statutory laws identify the state as the duty bearer and where claims on public action were distinctly stated, citizens harboured considerable disillusion about the realization of promised rights. Claims on duty bearers such as local or national governments, even when channels of response have been established in law, are all too often unfulfilled due to distance, cost, politicization, or corruption. However, this does not mean that such legal rights are meaningless, as ‘even an unrespected (human) right … is still of considerable moral import’ (ibid.), providing powerful moral justification for claims-making on the state. This view was echoed by respondents in countries like Kenya and Guatemala, where a right to food had been established under constitutional law, but not been implemented (to the knowledge of respondents). Several people noted that they valued the theoretical right, even as they lamented the nigh-impossibility of realizing it. Popular conceptions of the right to food anticipated several roles for the state, regardless of the legal mandate for such action, and national government was held by many to be the provider of last resort in acute emergencies, when people risked going hungry en masse. Alternative and customary rights discourses were particularly visible in relation to the obligations of the state, with moral economic ideas featuring in the specific responsibilities of public authorities to protect against recent food price spikes associated with global economic integration, and with claims to national and local control of the food system articulating principles aligned with the food sovereignty movement. The ‘vernacularization’ of the right to food involves translation and engaging—sometimes competing—local discourses already rich with ideas and interests around rights, food, relationships and politics. As Shareen Hertel has shown, India’s highly successful Right to Food movement purposefully kept international legal framings of the right to food at bay, instead giving priority to national rights and entitlements, and reflecting local conceptions and concerns (Hertel 2016). The politics of implementing the universal legal human right to food hence must negotiate a vernacularization of rights upwards, so that diverse and grounded ‘common sense’ views of what rights really mean can influence transnational understandings. One of the implications of these findings is that knowledge of the right to food is gained through knowledge of actual struggles around food, whether in relation to periods of dearth historically, through enduring social movements that involve a wide range of the population, or through political struggles over laws and policies, including during moments of food crisis. It is significant that human rights activists in India have maintained a consistent focus on popular education about hunger, drawing inspiration from shared histories of food struggles (Hertel 2016). Moreover, as the content and form of the right to food is constituted through concrete struggles, advancing knowledge of real-world examples of ways in which the right to food is—or is not—being realized seems likely to serve as motivation, justification, and model for other rights claimants. In other words, efforts to vernacularize the right to food are likely to have most traction where actual struggles, past or present, provide a vivid illustration of the nature of the right at stake, and of the mechanisms for its realization. A practical implication is that the realization of the right to food involves not only conceptual and legal translations, but also situating those in the specific histories and political struggles around food in which people are already invested. Champions of the right to food could valuably start by documenting and disseminating accounts of episodes of hunger and of struggles to prevent or protect against it, ensuring these remain part of the public record and part of public awareness, a real-life reference for the right to food at the point when it is denied or realized. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the communities and individuals involved in the research for the time they have given to make this research possible. Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert provided invaluable research assistance on earlier versions of this paper, which also benefited from comments from Priscilla Claeys and Celestine Nyamu Musembi for which the authors are thankful. Many thanks are due to Ferdous Jahan, Rosario Leon, Ludovic Kibora, Tassew Woldehanna, Alma Lucrecia Olivet López, Rachma Nurbani, Grace Nyonyintono Lubaale, Gatimu Carolyne Wanjiku, Mysbah Balagamwala, Nhat Nguyen Duc, Thang Tran Cong and Mwila Mulumbi for their permission to use the data they collected, and to Richard King, Duncan Green and Nick Chisholm for inputs on the overall analysis. Thanks are also due to Patta Scott-Villiers for the idea for the title. All errors of fact and interpretation are those of the authors alone. Funding This research was financed by UK Aid, under an accountable grant to Oxfam GB, and by Irish Aid. Footnotes 1 Famine was common during the colonial period, particularly the 1940s; regional episodes occurred in the post-colonial period (see Brennan et al. 1984). 2 When Guatemalans talk about constitutional provisions, they may have in mind the 2005 Law on the National System for Food and Nutritional Security, as a result of which ‘Guatemala stands out as one of the first countries to have adopted a framework law on the right to food, leading a movement that now reaches almost twenty countries worldwide, including a number of countries in Latin America’ (UN Human Rights Council 2010: 12). 3 The assessment by these research participants matches that by the then UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, on the implementation of Guatemala’s pioneering national framework law, in which he noted that despite a plan and ‘excellent’ legal framework being in place, the institutional mechanisms for implementation were ineffective in practice, as well as uncoordinated and inconsistent (UN Human Rights Council 2010). 4 This is a reference to the referendum preceding the constitution of Kenya adopted in 2010. 5 According to a draft on the legal basis of the right to food in Bangladesh by the Bangladesh Legal Aid Services Trust (BLAST) on behalf of the Right to Food Campaign in Bangladesh. 6 Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer, who drew our attention to this point. 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TI - A Common Sense Approach to the Right to Food
JO - Journal of Human Rights Practice
DO - 10.1093/jhuman/huy028
DA - 2018-11-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/a-common-sense-approach-to-the-right-to-food-4MTCeIw6LJ
SP - 367
VL - 10
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -