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Ms. Hilde F. Johnson, Minister of International Development

Statement at National Seminar on the Right to Adequate Food - Focus on National Implementation - The Right to Food

Oslo, April 11, 2002

Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen

It is a pleasure for me to welcome you to this second part of our two-day seminar on the right to food. I would especially like to welcome the participants who have travelled a long way to take part in the discussions. As you see from the seminar programme, the focus today will be on the international dimension, and more specifically on the rights-based approach to international development.

I believe that learning from each other’s experiences and plans will be extremely useful, and is in fact essential if we are to move forward. This is the main reason why the Minister of Agriculture and I took the initiative to this seminar. One of the occasions where we can make use of your collective wisdom is of course the "World Food Summit: five years later", which is being held in June.

International law clearly recognizes that everyone has the fundamental right to be free from hunger. Much work has been done, on both national and international levels, to secure the implementation of this right.

Still, as you all know, almost 800 million people throughout world are malnourished due to insufficient food. And 150 million of these are children. This is totally unacceptable, as we agreed long ago in the World Food Summit Declaration of 1996. This is why we must now intensify our efforts to remedy this situation. I hope that our discussions today will help to forge a consensus on how we can do so, in Rome and beyond.

Let’s agree on the starting point: Fighting hunger is a question of fighting poverty. Poverty produces hunger: Food-insecure people are too poor to afford the food that is available. But hunger and malnutrition also produce more poverty: without adequate food people cannot be productive in schools or jobs.

Hunger and HIV/AIDS also constitute a vicious circle: poor people are the most prone to contract the lethal virus. At the same time, without a sufficient supply of inexpensive medicines HIV-infected people’s best hope of prolonging their lives is nutritious food. Even with medicines a healthy diet is strongly recommended. These examples show that there is no alternative to a holistic approach to combating hunger.

I think therefore that we cannot overemphasize the importance of having achieved agreement at the global level on the fundamental goals of development cooperation:

First and foremost that poverty reduction, and ultimately, poverty eradication , is now acknowledged to be the overarching goal by the whole development community – by the developing countries themselves, the UN, the international finance institutions and the industrialized countries.

Equally important is the new consensus that attacking poverty is about much more than increasing income and economic growth – it is about empowerment, participation, health, education, equality between women and men, respect and dignity for all.

This new understanding is embodied in the Millennium Development Goals, which serve as the common frame of reference for new undertakings in development cooperation.

As we are all aware, the Millennium Development Goals aim to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty. This means halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

There is now agreement that the goals can only be reached through a coordinated approach by each and every country based on the poverty reduction strategy papers. This approach includes pro-poor macro-economic policies, sectoral programmes and investment in education, health and food production.

I believe that in these efforts we must be guided by a rights-based approach to development. The international debate on human rights has for far too long been dominated by the assumption that human rights is all about civil and political rights, while development is all about economic growth. This is wrong. Combating poverty is an important human rights issue. We must therefore give the economic, social and cultural rights their rightful place in the human rights machinery and in practice. Both hinges must be in good working order if the window is to swing open and lead to development. We need to understand that civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights are mutually reinforcing and we need to act upon this understanding.

Our answer to this debate must therefore be a holistic approach. All human rights deserve equal attention. Human rights are a precondition for and an integral part of development, which has been defined by the UN as "the process of expanding people’s choices". Violations of individuals rights limit their choices, and the poorest and most oppressed are left with almost none. In this respect it is vital not to lose the focus on the individual. Rights are concerned with individuals, and violations are felt individually. If we do not act, this has consequences. For each person. So does action, policies and measures at the macro level. They are felt by each and every individual. They determine whether the individual gets an education, basic health services or food, whether the individual can speak out without being thrown into prison, practise his or her beliefs, receive equal treatment.

A rights-based approach to food security, therefore, does not consider the beneficiaries of development merely as passive recipients, but as active stakeholders. The focus on rights-based development is an important tool in the poverty reduction struggle. And human rights legislation can provide a foundation for action and complement other tools in this struggle to eradicate hunger and poverty.

National governments have a great responsibility to do everything possible to ensure that their peoples have the right to food. To ensure that people have physical and economic access to enough safe, nutritious food to lead active, healthy lives. We must distinguish, however, between the unwillingness of national governments to take action against hunger and an inability to do so. Thus, the international community clearly has an equally great responsibility to support the efforts of national governments in their struggle against poverty and malnutrition. I think it is fair to say that my government is well prepared to do its part in meeting this challenge.

The Millennium Summit’s goal to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger reflected the World Food Summit Plan of Action of 1996, where national leaders pledged political will and commitment to achieving food security for all, to eradicating hunger in all countries.

We – the international society – have not lived up to our commitments: You – the experts – have an obligation to keep reminding us that current data show that the number of undernourished people is falling at a rate of 8 million a year, far below the promised rate of 20 million a year. How can we find ways of improving this rate? This will clearly be the main goal of the follow-up conference to the World Food Summit.

One of the purposes of this seminar is to consider the possibility of calling for the development of a voluntary code of conduct on the right to adequate food. We have agreed on what the right to food actually means. The task now is to accomplish a rights approach at the country level. The intention is to adopt a document which will promote and guide a process of implementing the right to adequate food at the national level.

I am convinced that such an instrument would help to guide national governments towards implementing the right to adequate food. The process of developing such an instrument would foster political commitment and ownership for governments. When adopted, it could serve as a framework for planning and action for governments.

My government therefore strongly supports such a course of action, as a way of strengthening our common struggle against hunger. How we can best strengthen this commitment at the Rome meeting, is something you will discuss later today. I hope you will agree that the commitment to develop a code of conduct must be strengthened.

During my previous period as Minister of International Development and Human Rights I submitted to the Norwegian parliament a Plan of Action for Human Rights entitled "Focus on Human Dignity". Apart from being quite unique, at least for a Western European country, in its emphasis on domestic human rights issues, it was also unique in its emphasis on the social, economic and cultural rights – on a holistic human rights approach. It devoted much attention to what is now generally called "the rights way to development".

Among the measures recommended in the plan was the strengthening of competence-building and research. The goal was to harness expertise in advocacy, assessment, project design and monitoring in this area. This is especially important for human rights that have largely been neglected, such as the right to health, to education and, not least, the right to food.

This year, after returning to government, I presented a new plan of action for combating poverty. Developing the agricultural sector and improving food security are identified as two of the main challenges in this plan. I have set up an external task force to help prepare a strategy for increasing Norway’s development assistance in these fields.

Many of you who are present here today have been very active over the years in promoting the right to food as a human right, in both theory and practice.

These efforts to establish the implications of the right to food and the corresponding obligations for states and non-state actors, have been crucial. I am thinking of the theoretical contributions, the systematic lobbying in international fora, the establishment of emerging movements in several countries, and the development of information and training material.

Continuing access and intake of adequate food is critical for the enjoyment of all other rights. The joint efforts to reach the goals of 2015 will bring us a long way. There is a dynamism in international development that hasn’t been there for years. A commitment to change, and to act. A commitment that we must exploit fully at the Rome meeting in June.

So, one day we may get there. No, let me rephrase this: one day we must get there. If not in 2015, then later. But this won’t happen unless political will is translated into practice. Knowledge into commitment. Words into deeds. This is the task of all of us present here. To make it happen – and to make a difference – on the ground. No more – no less.

Thank you for your attention.