A/HRC/16/40 II. International legal framework on the right to food and nondiscrimination 6. The right to adequate food is a human right that protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity and be free from hunger. It is recognized under international humanitarian law and human rights, including in the fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (arts. 6 and 59), the Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (arts. 54 and 69), the Protocol Additional II to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of NonInternational Armed Conflicts (arts. 5.1 (b), 14 and 17.1), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (art. 12), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (arts. 24 and 27) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (arts. 25 (f) and 28.1). 7. Being protected by such a vast array of international documents not only confirms the status of the right to food as unequivocally universal in times of peace as much as in times of armed conflict, but also speaks to its interdependence with other civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. To state the obvious, the right to water and sanitation, the right to health, the right to education and indeed the right to life are intimately bound to the realization of the right to food (A/HRC/12/24). 8. The international instrument most often cited as the main legal source of the right to food is the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art. 11). The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the treaty body monitoring implementation by States of the Covenant, authoritatively defined in its general comment No.12 (1999), that the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement (para 6). Food should be available in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, free from adverse substances, and acceptable within a given culture (paras. 8, 12). In connection to both economic and physical accessibility, the Committee highlighted the importance of giving particular attention to vulnerable groups (para. 13), an approach embraced by States in the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Summit Plan of Action, of November 1996, and renewed in the five Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security. Under international law, Governments are bound to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food. As part of their obligations to protect people’s resource base for food, States must ensure that activities of the private business sector and civil society organizations are in conformity with the right to food (para. 27). 9. In elaborating the obligations relating to the right to food, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights draws on one of the cardinal principles of international law, the prohibition of discrimination. Stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations, the principle of non-discrimination was set out in 1945 to govern the post-secondworld-war world.4 The all-encompassing stipulation “without any discrimination” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is strongly echoed in virtually all human rights instruments at the international and regional levels. The non-discrimination principle has been enshrined in identical provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. According to article 2, paragraph 2 of the latter Covenant, each State party is obliged to guarantee that 4 4 Manfred Nowak, UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: CCCP Commentary, 2nd ed. (Strasbourg, NP Engel, 2005), p. 599.