Abstract
I argue that recognizing a human right to adequate food and enforcing it as a legal right is an important way to promote and ensure sustainable food security. I consider objections that have been raised against subsistence rights and socio-economic rights, including the argument that such rights are not feasible, that they are not justiciable, and that they are too amorphous—that it is not clear what is required to fulfill these rights and by whom. I defend the right to adequate food against these objections by considering how this right has been interpreted and applied in international law and how it has been protected in other domestic legal systems. I analyze different dimensions of the right to adequate food and I apply these to recent issues concerning sustainable food security in the United States, such as food deserts.
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Notes
States made this commitment at the 1996 World Food Summit and in UN Millennium Development Goals (2000).
The food stamps program was cut by $800 million in 2014, and it will be cut by a total of $8.6 billion over the next decade (The Agricultural Act of 2014, also known as the 2014 U.S. Farm Bill). This is much lower than the $40 billion in cuts that Republicans initially proposed. The United States Department of Agriculture reported that 48.1 million adults and 7.9 million children lived in ‘food insecure’ households in 2014. There was a significant 14 million increase in the number of people classified as food insecure between 2007 and 2011 (Coleman-Jensen 2015).
The Covenant has been ratified by 164 state parties and signed by an additional five states. While the United States has signed the Covenant, it has not ratified it.
Article 11.2 includes some guidance on how states should fulfill this right:
“State Parties….recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:
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a.
To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;
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b.
Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.”
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a.
The Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition (1974) affirms that ‘Every man, woman, and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop fully and maintain their physical and mental faculties.’
For example, in 2008, the United States was the only country to vote against a General Assembly Resolution on the right to food (A/RES/63/187, December 18, 2008).
A/RES/64/159, December 18, 2009.
We can trace this view of rights back to Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham similarly argued that ‘Right is the child of law; from real laws come real rights, but from imaginary law, from ‘laws of nature,’ come imaginary rights… Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts (Bentham 2003).’
Henry Shue argues that basic rights correlate to three duties. The duty to avoid depriving people of their rights, the duty to protect from deprivation, and the duty to aid the deprived. The first relates to the duty to respect, the second relates to the duty to protect. He argues the duty to aid the deprived largely will arise when the first two duties have not been fulfilled (Shue 1980, p. 352).
Shue discusses similar kinds of cases (Shue 1980).
The United States Department of Agriculture defines food deserts as ‘urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. The USDA's Economic Research Service estimates that 23.5 million people in the United States live in food deserts. More than half of those people (13.5 million) are low-income.
This provides a response to O’Neill’s argument that instead of focusing on the perspective of passive rights claimants who are powerless, we should focus on the allocation of duties and the perspective of agents who have the power to change things (O’Neill 2009, p. 425). In order to determine what actions are needed to help those who are malnourished, it is more helpful to begin from the perspective of those who are malnourished.
Article 2.1 of the ICESCR states: ‘Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.’
For example, consider Rawls’ argument for the duty to assist burdened societies (Rawls 2001).
Article 21 of Belarus’ constitution declares that, ‘Every individual shall exercise the right to a dignified standard of living, including appropriate food, clothing, housing and likewise a continuous improvement of necessary living conditions.’
G v. An Bord Uchtala and Others (1980). The Irish Supreme Court stated that the right to life in Article 40 of the Constitution necessarily implies ‘the right to preserve and defend, and to have preserved and defended that life and the right to maintain that life at a proper human standard in matters of food, clothing and habitation’ (Knuth and Vidar 2011).
I am grateful to Christopher Bosso for suggesting this point.
Eric Christiansen examines the effectiveness of court adjudication of social welfare rights in South Africa and he argues that the model of adjudicating social rights in South Africa is exportable to other countries (Christiansen 2008, p. 369).
Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York 2001.
In another case, the New York Court of Appeals found that the state had a positive duty ‘to provide welfare payments to anyone considered indigent under the state’s “need standard”, even if the individual could not present papers proving that he or she received no support from relatives’ (Tucker v. Toia 1977).
For example, Onora O’Neill criticizes rights discourse for focusing on the passive perspective of the recipient of action and those who are powerless; we should instead focus on allocating duties of justice to agents with the power to change things and feed the hungry (O’Neill 2009, p. 425).
While I think that Feinberg provides a good account of the value of rights, he does not regard socio-economic rights (entitlements to do or have something rather than claims against others to refrain from acting in certain ways) as ‘valid rights’ because they are not ‘valid claims’ against any particular individual, especially under conditions of scarcity. He is however willing to accept a special ‘manifesto sense of right’ that need not be correlated with another’s duty. He acknowledges that having an unfulfilled need is to have a claim against the world, even if against no one in particular. A person in need is in a position to make a claim, even when there is no one in the corresponding position to do anything about it. He regards these as ‘permanent possibilities of rights’—the natural seed from which rights will grow. He writes, ‘Although manifesto writers use the word right improperly when they speak of them as if already actual rights, they are easily forgiven, for this is but a powerful way of expressing the conviction that they ought to be recognized by states here and now as potential rights and consequently as determinants of present aspirations and guides to present policies.’ (Feinberg 1970, p 255).
Christina Courtis argues that while courts and litigation should not be seen as the only means for the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, the complete absence of any resource to courts of law for these rights downgrades the span of mechanisms available for victims of rights violations, makes state accountability weaker, erodes deterrence and fosters impunity. Courtis 2007, p. 320.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter: Mission to Canada, 2012. Some judges have agreed with this. For example, in the dissenting opinion in Gosselin v. Quebec (2002), Justice Louise Arbour concluded (along with Justice L’Heureux-Dubé) that the right to life and security of the person in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives rise to a positive obligation to provide basic means of subsistence to those who cannot provide for themselves. She wrote that while it may be true that courts are ill-equipped to decide policy matters concerning resource allocation, courts can nonetheless determine whether states have met this minimal obligation based on the government’s own assessment of what is necessary to meet the ordinary needs of adults.
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Acknowledgments
I have presented different versions of this paper at the International Society for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy World Congress, the Northeastern University Workshop on Feeding Cities: Ethical and Policy Issues in Urban Food Systems, the New Research in Practical Philosophy Workshop, the Annual Contemporary Philosophy Workshop at Boston College, and the International Social Philosophy Conference. I am grateful for the helpful and insightful comments. I have received from those who attended these presentations and those who have commented on earlier drafts of this paper, particularly, Christopher Bosso, Michael Fieleke, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Chad Horne, Doug Mackay, Michael Kessler, Vida Panitch, Jonathan Peterson, Ronald Sandler, and Patrick Turmel.
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Raponi, S. A Defense of the Human Right to Adequate Food. Res Publica 23, 99–115 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-015-9315-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-015-9315-9