A/HRC/7/5 page 9 17. As defined by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its general comment No. 12 (1999), “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). Inspired by this general comment, the Special Rapporteur defines the right to food as: “the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear”. 18. The right to food is, above all, the right to be able to feed oneself in dignity. The right to food includes the right to have access to the resources and to the means to ensure and produce one’s own subsistence, including land, small-scale irrigation and seeds, credit, technology and local and regional markets, especially in rural areas and for vulnerable and discriminated groups, traditional fishing areas, a sufficient income to enable one to live in dignity, including for rural and industrial workers, and access to social security and social assistance for the most deprived. The right to food also includes the right to have access to safe drinking water.9 B. Definition of States’ correlative obligations 19. Commitment to the right to food entails obligations of Governments to ensure freedom from hunger for all people at all times. By committing themselves to advancing the right to food through ratification of international conventions, Governments are bound to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food without discrimination, which also means that they should be held accountable to their populations if they violate those obligations. These three levels of obligations were defined by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its general comment No. 12. The Special Rapporteur set out this normative framework in detail in his report to the Commission on Human Rights in 2006.10 20. The definitions of the right to food and States’ correlative obligations to respect, protect and fulfil it were endorsed in the Right to Food Guidelines adopted by the FAO Council in November 2004. This step marked very significant progress, bringing to a close an important theoretical and conceptual period of 20 years initiated by Asbjørn Eide and paving the way for a new period of practical and concrete implementation of the right to food at the national level. C. States’ extraterritorial obligations concerning the right to food 21. The primary responsibility to ensure human rights will always rest with national governments. However, given the current context of globalization and strong international interdependence, national governments are not always able to protect their citizens from the 9 10 See A/56/210 and E/CN.4/2003/54. See E/CN.4/2006/44.