A/HRC/4/30 page 23 somebody who seeks a better life by migrating to another country. He does so voluntarily. The refugee from hunger does not move voluntarily. He is forced to flee. Hunger is an immediate threat to his life, and the lives of his family. He has no choice. Especially when famine strikes a whole country or a whole region (for example, the 2005 famine in the Sahel zone of sub-Saharan Africa), refugees from hunger have no other choice but to flee across international borders. 64. Every human being has the right to food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger. These rights have been recognized in article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as in many other international instruments, without any territorial or jurisdictional limitation. The Special Rapporteur has already presented, in several of his previous reports (see E/CN.4/2006/44), the legal consequences of this absence of territorial or jurisdictional limitations: States have the obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food of all people, living within their jurisdiction or in other countries. In this particular context, this means that Governments have a legal obligation to help the refugees from hunger, regardless of their country of origin or status. 65. Today, however, most Governments treat crossing international frontiers to be free from hunger as an illegal act. The Special Rapporteur considers this response to be a shame on humanity. For those fleeing from hunger, the most appropriate response is to recognize that they have the right to seek asylum and to protection of temporary refuge, and in the long run, to recognize that they are refugees, entitled to international protection. To detain and then forcibly repatriate people fleeing from hunger to a territory where they will continue to suffer hunger and chronic undernourishment is unjustifiable. As the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights rightly stated, “there is little to distinguish between a person facing death through starvation and another threatened with arbitrary execution because of her political beliefs”.67 66. The principle of non-refoulement is a well established principle of international law. It means that no person shall be rejected, returned or extradited to a territory where his life, physical integrity or liberty would be threatened. Accordingly, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, urged all Governments to “observe the principle of non-refoulement scrupulously and not expel any person to frontiers or territories where they might run the risk of human rights violations, regardless of whether they have officially been recognized as refugees” (A/60/316, para. 52). 67. It is important today that this protection be enlarged to protect the refugees from hunger, to recognize that they have at least, but immediately, the right to seek asylum and the right to receive protection of temporary refuge. In the longer term, it is essential to take the most severe violations of economic and social rights into account in the determination of refugees, including violations of the right to food. To this end, States should consider the possibility of expanding the definition of refugees, either by revising the existing international instruments, or by adopting new instruments for the protection of all refugees, those fleeing to escape severe violations of civil and political rights as well as those fleeing to escape severe violations of economic, social and cultural rights. 67 OHCHR, Fact Sheet 20, Human Rights and Refugees.