A/HRC/39/67 Food sovereignty The inclusion of food sovereignty is a crucial element for peasants to ensuring national food production. The concept is recognized at international, regional and national levels. They stated that food sovereignty is about process while food security is about outcomes. Multiple Special rapporteurs on the right to food have said that food sovereignty is a condition for the full realization of the right to food. Moreover, the text underscores the notion of sustainability, which, according to CESCR, “is intrinsically linked to the notion of adequate food or food security, implying food being accessible for both present and future generations. Sustainability incorporates long-term availability and accessibility. Right to culturally acceptable food The right to food in particular requires States to ensure that individuals, either alone or in community with others, have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement. The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement. Article 17 The importance and urgency of articulating a substantive right to land must be seen in the context of forced displacements, large-scale land grabs, speculative land investments, climate disruptions and environmental devastation, and rapid urbanization. It must also be seen in the context of widespread hunger and food insecurity in rural communities, and the increasing criminalization and persecution of environmental and land rights defenders. The right to land must be recognized as both an individual and a collective right given the communal nature of land use and ownership in many parts of the world. Secure land rights, including collective land rights, are therefore an essential precondition for the ability of peasants and other people living in rural areas to enjoy human rights, ensure food security, and help protect our planet’s biodiversity States must ensure freedom from arbitrary displacement and forced evictions and must ensure the right of rural communities to return to lands from which they have been displaced, or to receive just and fair compensation when their return is not possible. States must also protect rural communities’ access to land and natural resources by preventing third parties from interfering in any way with the enjoyment of this right. The unequal distribution of arable land is a major contributing factor to hunger and poverty in the world today, especially in rural areas. Studies have shown that more secure, sustainable, and equitable access to land serves not only rural communities’ rights, but also supports broader economic development and food security goals. The importance of redistributive agrarian reforms has been highlighted by the ILO and CEDAW, and in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Tenure Guidelines, among other instruments. Redistributive agrarian reforms must guarantee equal access of men and women, and priority should be given to historically discriminated communities, to landless peasants, women, youth, small-scale fishers and other rural workers in the allocation of public lands, fisheries and forests. The notion of access to land proposed by some countries instead of right to land would dilute the protection of the rights of peasants. Communities and people access, control, manage and use land and natural resources in many different forms, in order to live a dignified life, according to their social and cultural context. Although secure access to land is implicit to the realization of numerous rights, international human rights law explicitly guarantees only limited land rights. First, States cannot arbitrarily deprive people of property. The right to property, however, protects the 57