A/HRC/25/57
producers, particularly the least competitive among them. Cash transfers to poor families,
such as the Oportunidades programme in Mexico (A/HRC/19/59/Add.2, paras. 21–27), the
Bolsa Família in Brazil (A/HRC/13/33/Add.6, para. 33) or the Child Support Grant in
South Africa (A/HRC/19/59/Add.3, para. 39), have shown their effectiveness in reducing
child poverty, and hunger. As long as gaps remain in social protection, however, food price
inflation will continue to be a serious threat to the right to food of low-income households.
Thus, while low food prices may not be a long-term solution – both because of the fiscal
cost of subsidies to farmers and because a policy focused on keeping prices low may
ultimately harm the least competitive food producers – they remain, in the short term, vital.
Social protection schemes should be strengthened in all countries, and the social protection
agenda and the agricultural agenda should be better aligned with each other, to gradually
succeed in making the transition.
44.
National strategies grounded in the right to food should be conceived as
participatory processes, co-designed by all relevant stakeholders, including in particular the
groups most affected by hunger and malnutrition – smallholder producers, fisherfolk,
pastoralists, indigenous people, the urban poor, migrants and agricultural workers.
Interministerial bodies should be provided with recommendations that can support local
initiatives that support the transition to sustainable food systems (A/68/288, paras. 42–46).
The strategies should set out objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant
and time-bound. Their rights-based dimensions require that they identify which actor is
responsible for which action, and that implementation be supported by independent
monitoring in the hands of national human rights institutions or, perhaps preferably, food
security and nutrition councils. Because gender-based discrimination violates the right to
food of women and girls, the empowerment of women and gender equality, as well as the
adoption of social protection schemes that are transformative of gender roles, should be a
priority of such strategies. Enhancing the role of women in decision-making at all levels,
including within the household, moreover, improves nutritional and health outcomes. And
women must be better supported as economic agents in the food systems (A/HRC/22/50).42
C.
Shaping an enabling international environment
45.
The progressive realization of the right to food also requires improving global
governance. Since its reform in 2009, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has
been making a major contribution to the global food security agenda. The Special
Rapporteur actively participated in this process as a member of the “Friends of the Chair”
during the reform phase, and later as a member of the CFS Advisory Group. Perhaps the
most immediate success of CFS is the fact that it brings together such a wide variety of
stakeholders – governments, of course, but also civil society, international agencies and the
private sector – who each provide a different framing of the challenges that the food
systems face, thus stimulating a process of collective learning across different
constituencies.
46.
CFS allows for an iterative process to take place, to gradually arrive at
recommendations based on a consensus across various groups of stakeholders. These
recommendations are collected in the Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and
Nutrition, a first version of which was endorsed in October 2012.43 The Framework is a
rolling document, conceived to improve coordination and guide synchronized action by a
42
43
18
See also Asian Development Bank and FAO, Gender Equality and Food Security: Women’s
Empowerment as a Tool against Hunger (authored by Olivier De Schutter), 2013.
A second version was adopted in October 2013, at the fortieth plenary session of CFS.
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