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Recorded presentation

Ellen Messer, PhD, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, 150 Harrison Ave., Boston MA 02111, Boston MA, MA 02111, 617 548-5820, ellen.messer@tufts.edu and Marc J. Cohen, PhD, Food Consumption and Nutrition Division, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2033 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006.

For 30 years, US food and nutrition scientists and policy makers have explored the possibility of making "right to food" the moral and legal cornerstone of US domestic and international nutritional initiatives. The US government has consistently opposed a formal, legal "right to food" as overly burdensome and inconsistent with Constitutional law. Anti-hunger advocates, by contrast, have favored a rights-based framework as a way to hold government accountable for improving the nutritional situation of its poorest citizens and for saving lives and preventing malnutrition in developing countries. The US government has continually expanded food and nutrition assistance at home and abroad, but not within a human-rights framework.

Using as our touchstones U.S. government and non-governmental organization testimonies from the 1976 Congressional "Right to Food Resolutions," the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition, and the 1996 World Food Summit, this paper traces the US government and non-government "right to food" positions over the period, 1976 to 2006. It pays particular attention to the ways the US Department of Agriculture and the International Food Policy Research Institute framed their nutrition programs and research: to privilege, integrate, or reject increasing attention to "right to food" on the international food policy agenda.

The paper uses qualitative analyses of historical policy position papers, testimonies, research reports, and the popular nutrition literature to evaluate the way "human rights" and "right to food" as framing and rhetoric influenced nutrition policy, public and official understandings and outreach. In this documentation process, it also integrates information from the wider "human rights" positions of the food-and-nutrition advocacy community, including the Food First Information and Action Network, the Food Research and Action Center, and various sustainable agriculture, and community food security organizations, to demonstrate where different advocacy agents fit into the process of advancing a human right to food sensibility.

This analysis illuminates two interrelated questions: what value does the "human rights" perspective add to food and nutrition policy and practice? And, if that perspective does add value, what are the continuing rationales of the opposition?

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the legal parameters of "right to food" within the international human rights framework, and locate agencies that specialize in "right to food" education and casework.
• Follow guidelines that describe the step-by-step evaluation of "right to food" practice.
• Articulate a procedure for applying "right to food" framework and guidelines in particular research and policy situations.

Keywords: Human Rights, Food and Nutrition

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation