Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics and Human Rights
held during the SCN's 3nd Session, 15 March 2005, Brasilia
Co-Chairs1: Wenche Barth Eide and Uwe Kracht (WANAHR)
PART I: Developments since the 31st SCN session
1. The Voluntary Guidelines – landmark adoption and initial follow-up
WG/NEHR members continued to actively participate in the negotiations of the
Intergovernmental Working Group for the Elaboration of a Set of Voluntary
Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food
in the Context of National Food Security (IGWG), mandated by WFS:fyl – right up
to the successful conclusion on 23 September 2004. With the formal adoption of
the Voluntary Guidelines (VG) by the 127th session of the FAO Council, 22-27
November 2004, governments themselves took ownership of a set of guidelines on
the implementation of the right to food – the first ever case of its kind for an
economic and social human right.
The challenge is now the promotion of the application and operationalisation
of the VGs, and WG/NEHR members have been involved in several activities,
including efforts towards the operationalisation of Guideline 17 on
monitoring and evaluation and Guideline 3.2 on a baseline assessment for
the elaboration of rights-based strategies.
In the first case, the Oslo-based International Project on the Right to Food
in Development (IPRFD) has taken on to execute a project initiated by FAO on
“Elaborating Guidelines to Monitor the Implementation of the Right to Adequate
Food at Country Level”, with Co-chair Wenche Barth Eide as Project Manager and
this year’s SCN Abraham Horwitz Lecturer Kaia Engesveen as Assistant Project
Manager; the project works with international and national resource persons for
case studies in Uganda and in Brazil, including former FIVIMS coordinator
Maarten Immink and SCN/NGO network coordinator Flavio Valente.
Concerning the second activity, Co-chair Uwe Kracht is working with FAO on an
implementation manual for the guideline under consideration.
2. Capacity building
Capacity development at all levels is generally recognised as crucial
priority for the advancement of a rights-based approach to food and nutrition
security – a recognition which shaped the agenda of WG/NEHR at its 10th meeting
in Brasilia. Over the past year, WG members have been active in this field on a
number of fronts, including the following:
(i) Training of UN Country Teams (UN Action 2 Programme): The WG
Chair, after having left his one-year assignment as senior adviser to the
Executive Director of Unicef on human rights-based approaches to programming (HRBAP)
in June 2004, spent considerable time on training of UN Country Teams in the use
of HRBAP. This has been part of the Action 2 Programme. Priority has been given
to countries preparing for new CCA/UNDAFs. The training included UNCTs in the
Philippines, Cambodia, Kenya and Ethiopia and several countries in the Middle
East and North Africa region (training workshops in Marrakech and Cairo). He
also participated as resource person in the training of trainers workshop at the
UN System Staff College in Turin in May 2005.
(ii) Oslo: The first academic course linking nutrition and human rights
now in its eight year WG Co-chair Wenche Barth Eide at the University of
Oslo and NEHR core team member Arne Oshaug at the Akershus University College
continued to jointly run this special international course offer also in 2004,
with varied participation from several countries. Participants find it useful to
see nutrition problems and their solutions in the context of human rights and to
discuss how the international human rights system may help advance nutrition
policies and action and relevant legislative measures.
(iii) Efforts in South Africa: Members of the NEHR core team organised,
through the University of Oslo and the International Project on the Right to
Food in Development (IPRFD) together with the Community Law Centre (CLC) at the
University of the Western Cape in South Africa, a conference in Cape Town in
November 2004 between South African (and a few international) human rights law
experts and national nutrition academics and professionals, with a view to
developing training efforts within South Africa regarding food and nutrition
related rights such as has already been conducted in Norway for several years at
the University of Oslo and Akershus University College (see above). In South
Africa a national steering committee was established at the conference in Cape
Town and met for the first time in March 2005 under the coordination of human
rights lawyer and right to food specialist Sibonile Khoza at the CLC. Such
country-based alliances between legal and nutrition expertise should set an
example in the further efforts to establish liaisons between the two
professional communities. As a step in such a process, the WG/NEHR will have the
opportunity to present the Norwegian/South African example in a two-hour
symposium at the IUNS Congress in Durban in September 2005.
3. SCN case study development
WG Co-chair Kracht was a member of the SCN Consultant Team for the four
country case studies in Angola, Bolivia, Brazil and Mozambique on “Integrating
food and nutrition interventions in national development plans in order to
accelerate the achievement of the MDGs in the context of realizing the human
right to adequate food”. Kracht worked in particular with the Bolivia
national team and participated in workshops in La Paz and Brasilia.
4. Follow-up action to last year’s WG-NEHR recommendations
(i) Mainstreaming human rights
Last year’s three WG recommendations all centred on the mainstreaming of human
rights into the work of the SCN and its working groups, including SCN’s inputs
to the Millennium Project Hunger Task Force to reflect human rights principles
and standards in its final report. The human rights focus of the four country
case studies and of the discussions at the Brasilia Symposium is a concrete
expression of SCN’s intensified mainstreaming efforts. The draft SCN Work Plan
2005-2010, now under discussion, puts the right to adequate food and to be free
from hunger and malnutrition squarely into the SCN’s mandate and vision and the
thrust of the corresponding activities envisaged over the next five years.
Concerning the human rights mainstreaming in SCN working groups, NEHR had
last year pointed specifically to the desirability of a particular contact
between the WGs on Monitoring and Evaluation and on Capacity Building. The
former had decided not to meet during the 32nd session, while the Capacity
Building WG initiated contact with NEHR in good time before the Brasilia meeting
and proposed an exchange to make the Capacity Building group more human rights
focused. These contacts were continued during the Brasilia session, including
through a meeting of core members of both groups and a statement by the Capacity
Building Chair at the NEHR meeting. As a result, NEHR will further explore
possible cooperation with the Capacity Building group’s regional task forces.
In broader terms, last year’s NEHR meeting had discussed the possibility that
the SC or the WG might issue more precise guidelines on how to mainstream human
rights in the working groups, or that NEHR identify key topics on which to
solicit the views of other WGs. This was not effectuated; however, NEHR will
maintain close contact with the SC and the SCN Secretariat to consider how best
to go about the matter before the 33rd session. An option to have joint sessions
of NEHR with other WGs to foster open dialogue, was also not pursued given the
logistic constraints unless planned very early as well as the time constraints
given the various WG’s own agendas; however one option was to recommend the 33th
session to have one longer joint meeting by NEHR and the WG on Capacity
Building, focusing specifically on HR based training activities as a promising
starting point for human rights mainstreaming anywhere.
One of the proposals voiced in last year’s NEHR meeting was to explicitly
associate human rights lawyers with SCN’s mainstreaming efforts. To this effect,
close contact was established between the SCN Secretariat and the Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights through WG member Carlos Lopez, with a view
to join forces. And the aforementioned South African conference was a concrete
step in that direction.
In this connection, it should also be mentioned that the two WG/NEHR
Co-chairs completed editing of the first Volume of a book publication, with
broad contribution both from the legal human rights profession and
nutrition/development based human rights experts, to be published mid-year 2005,
and with a Volume II to follow towards the end of the year. The project aims
inter alia at strengthening the understanding and language of communication
between the two sets of human rights advocates as well as others interested in
taking up a human rights approach to their work as researchers, planners and
practitioners.
As to the SCN’s input into the final report of the Millennium Project’s
Hunger Task Force, this was laudably followed up by the SCN Secretariat and
individuals in the SCN community, and there is now a substantial reflection of
human rights in the Task Force Plan of Action.
(ii) Related activities
Last year’s NEHR meeting had included a brief discussion on the need for the
further advancement of codes of conduct for the food-related industry, building
on the work of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human
Rights submitted to and discussed by the Commission on Human Rights, on “Norms
on responsibilities of transnational corporations and other enterprises with
regard to human rights”. In this connection, Co-chair Wenche Barth Eide accepted
an invitation to become part of a GAIN advisory group for a “Blueprint on
Responsible Marketing of Fortified Foods” which met first time in Geneva in May
2004, this with a view to possibly have GAIN adopt human rights principles in
their Blueprint. A second GAIN meeting on the Blueprint was announced but never
effectuated. The issue should be of high interest to the nutrition community and
should thus be revisited.
Part II: Recommendations for SCN action
In recognition of the priority of human rights related capacity building, the
10th NEHR meeting focused on “Developing human resources for nutrition and
human rights”. It examined ongoing and emerging examples in this field and
discussed possibilities for intensified collaboration with other WGs,
specifically that on Capacity Building. The WG made two principal
recommendations for action by the SCN, one detailed by eight supporting
sub-recommendations. From them, three leading themes emerge as guiding rationale
for the action recommended: (i) the opportunity presented by the recent adoption
of the ‘government-owned’ Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food to advance a
rights-based approach to food and nutritional health; (ii) the opportunity
presented by the four SCN case studies and the Millennium Project pilot
countries to move forward with the implementation of a rights-based approach;
and (iii) the need to pursue human resource development and competence building
through a variety of modalities. The second recommendation builds on the
concerns related to the food industry, which emerged from last year’s NEHR
meeting, reinforced by recent developments in the respective UN human rights
bodies, as noted above.
What follows is a summary of the recommendations, with their full text being
annexed.
Recommendation 1:
SCN should promote a common vision regarding the realisation of the right to
adequate food and nutritional health for all as a means of reaching the
Millennium Development Goals. To that end, SCN, through its Working Group on
Nutrition, Ethics and Human Rights and in other ways, should:
- promote the application of the intergovernmental Voluntary Guidelines to
Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the
Context of National Food Security, with an explicit focus on those guidelines
most closely related to nutrition, notably Guideline 10;
- foster interdisciplinary competence building for applying human rights
principles in the efforts to promote nutrition in development among scholars,
professional groups and NGOs;
- cooperate with the Regional task forces established under the SCN Working
Group on Capacity Building where feasible;
- focus in particular on the four SCN case study countries (Bolivia, Brazil,
Angola and Mozambique) and the pilot countries under the Millennium Project
(Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia and Senegal)
Recommendation 2:
As part of the SCN’s concern with the application of the Voluntary
Guidelines, it should stimulate assessments and analyses of the impact on their
application caused by developments in the global food market, with special
attention to the role and activities of food corporations and the evolution in
the retail chains.
Part III: Organisation of work over the coming year
1. Future NEHR work programme
To help set in motion a work programme towards the implementation of the
recommendations, four task forces are proposed under the WG on NEHR:
Task Force 1: Elaborate modalities for competence building for the
application of the Voluntary Guidelines on the implementation of the right to
adequate food and broader rights-based approaches to food and nutritional
health.
Task Force 2: Support such competence building in the four SCN case study
countries in their efforts to use the Voluntary Guidelines (Bolivia, Brazil,
Angola and Mozambique) as well as the pilot countries for quick-win
interventions under the Millennium Project (Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia and
Senegal).
Task Force 3: Promote attention to the Voluntary Guidelines in the Action
2 Programme for capacity strengthening of UN country groups.
Task Force 4: Liaising between the WG on NEHR and other SCN working
groups to identify how these can integrate human rights principles to strengthen
their work and related advocacy in the application of the Voluntary Guidelines.
In a longer term perspective, depending on the capacities of the SCN and the
WG/NEHR, a 5th task force might be established to deal with the concerns under
Recommendation 2. The WG will undertake some preliminary explorations among the
SCN constituencies of the interest in such a task force and willingness to
contribute to its work.
Details of the work programme would be developed by each task force
2. Organisational matters
Intersessional consultations on future chairing arrangements for NEHR, in
accordance with the guidance provided by the SCN Strategic Plan, have already
been initiated. It is proposed to effect changes of Chair and/or Co-chairs at
the next annual SCN session.
ANNEX - Recommendations and modalities towards a Work Programme
RECOMMENDATIONS
I. SCN should promote a common vision regarding the realisation of the
right to adequate food and nutritional health for all as a means of reaching the
Millennium Development Goals. To that end, SCN, through its Working Group on
Nutrition, Ethics and Human Rights and in other ways, should:
- promote the application of the intergovernmental Voluntary Guidelines to
Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the
Context of National Food Security, with an explicit focus on those guidelines
most closely related to nutrition, notably Guideline 10;
- foster the raising of awareness and understanding of the Voluntary
Guidelines within the nutrition community at country level;
- foster interdisciplinary competence building for applying human rights
principles in the efforts to promote nutrition in development among scholars,
professional groups and NGOs;
- identify and encourage institutions/ individuals in the different regions
and countries who can catalyse and facilitate the process of capacity building
towards the use of the VG;
- network among different stakeholders with a view to initiate such capacity
building activities adapted to national and local needs and circumstances.
Stakeholders could include members of the academic nutrition community,
concerned NGOs, relevant government officials and others as the case may be;
- cooperate with the Regional task forces established under the SCN Working
Group on Capacity Building where feasible;
- focus in particular on the four SCN case study countries (Bolivia, Brazil,
Angola and Mozambique) and the pilot countries under the Millennium Project
(Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia and Senegal);
- promote attention to the VG within the UN Action 2 Programme for training
UN country teams.
II. As part of the SCN’s concern with the application of the Voluntary
Guidelines, it should stimulate assessments and analyses of the impact on their
application caused by developments in the global food market, with special
attention to the role and activities of food corporations and the evolution in
the retail chains.
1Working Group Chair Urban Jonsson was unable to
attend the 32nd SCN session.
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