The Global Food Challenge: Towards a Human Right s Approach to Trade and Investment Policies

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The number of undernourished people in the world has set a scandalous new record of one billion in 2009, in spite of a record grain harvest in 2008. This book argues that the “Global food Challenge” requires a fundamental reshaping of international trade and investment policies and rules to put human rights, particularly the right to adequate food, at the centre of economic policy. The authors analyse the incoherence in international policy created by the separation of international human rights from trade and investment regimes. They analyse concrete cases of human rights violations of landless farm workers, smallholder farmers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and slum dwellers; and, they look at the discrimination suffered by women in particular. all through misguided trade and investment policies, which have contributed as root causes of the global food crisis. The book also looks ahead to some of the new challenges confronting governments’ ability to realize the right to food, such as unregulated speculation and climate change. It finally proposes new and strengthened human rights instruments and new ways to integrate human rights principles into trade and investment policies.

Report by Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN), the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Germanwatch, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Brot für Alle and Brot für die Welt.