A/HRC/19/59 I. Introduction 1. The right to food cannot be reduced to a right not to starve. It is an inclusive right to an adequate diet providing all the nutritional elements an individual requires to live a healthy and active life, and the means to access them. States have a duty to protect the right to an adequate diet, in particular by regulating the food system, and to fulfil the right to adequate food by proactively strengthening people‘s access to resources, allowing them to have adequate diets.1 Consistent with this requirement, the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security (Right to Food Guidelines) recommend that States ensure that changes in the availability of and accessibility to food supply do not negatively affect dietary composition and intake, and that States support dietary diversity and healthy eating patterns, including breastfeeding.2 Agrifood companies also have a responsibility to respect the right to adequate food. They must avoid infringing upon this right, and seek to prevent any adverse impact their activities might have on the enjoyment of this right. 3 And the United Nations system itself must ensure that nutrition is taken into account in all relevant policy areas. 2. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur clarifies the content of these obligations, and explores the implications of the adequacy element of the right to food for agricultural policies and for the reshaping of the food systems. Nutrition, of course, is not only about access to food at the household level. It is also intimately linked to the health status of each individual within the family, power relationships within the household, and education about nutrition. The focus here, however, will be on one set of determinants of nutritional outcomes that are related to food production, transformation, marketing, retail and consumption—to agrifood systems, broadly conceived. This is only one part of the broader issue of nutrition, but it is a crucial part, and one that currently is undergoing deep transformations. 3. The report was prepared through a range of expert meetings and consultations. The Special Rapporteur would like to express his gratitude to the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as to the participants in the expert meeting convened in Geneva on 9 May 2011 and in the seminar convened on 20 May 2011 by the Gender and Nutrition Department of the University of Hohenheim. He also held meetings with the Standing Committee on Nutrition secretariat, with representatives of the Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition, including the chair of its board, and received regular updates on the Scaling Up Nutrition initiative, including by taking part in the High-Level Meeting on Nutrition in New York on 20 September 2011. He received briefs from various stakeholders and scientists from all regions, including the Harvard Law and International Development Society and Oxford Pro Bono Publico. What follows are his main conclusions as to how food systems can be made to ensure the right to an adequate diet for each individual. 1 2 3 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 12 (2009) on the right to adequate food, paras. 6, 9 and 15. Guideline 10.1. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (A/HRC/17/31), principles 11-24. 3