Overview: Food Rights

We have an obligation to the 850 million people who go hungry every day to ensure that all people have access to the food they need to sustain themselves and their families.

ActionAid brings the voices of hungry people to the halls of power, where the policies that control the distribution of food and resources are made. We couple insight from our on-the-ground work in the Africa, Asia and the Americas with solid research to craft policy proposals that will bring food to the hungry. We then take these solutions to congress, agency leaders, and other decision-makers here in the United States to fight for fair policies that will improve access to food for all.

Food is an essential human right. The United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) obligates governments to guarantee access to food for their people. ActionAid’s rights-based approach demands that governments – here and across the globe – fulfill this obligation for all of their people.

Small-scale farmers across the world are struggling to feed their families because of low crop prices, lack of government support, and limited access to land, water, credit, seeds and other inputs. Rural women, who produce between 60 and 80 percent of food in developing countries, are especially hard-hit by these challenges.

Droughts caused by climate change are decimating crop yields while floods in other areas wash away seeds, soil and crops. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that yields in some areas of Africa will be cut in half by 2020 as a result of these changes, unleashing a new wave of famine. And since 70% of those in extreme poverty live in rural areas, effective support to small-scale agriculture is key for poverty eradication.

But, together, we can fight hunger. ActionAid promotes sustainable agriculture, fair trade practices, better support for agricultural development, responsible adaptation to the effects of climate change, and research on how the fast-evolving biofuel economy will affect food production and distribution.

With our partners around the world, ActionAid advocates changes to international trade rules that harm poor people and working families. As the world rushes to produce biofuels ActionAid is working with small-scale farmers and examining the market impacts of replacing food crops with fuel stocks. To promote rural development and adequate food supplies, ActionAid calls on governments to provide more and better support for agricultural development. In light of the devastating impact of climate change, ActionAid demands that the rich countries most responsible for global warming contribute to the cost of climate adaptation in poor countries – a cost recently estimated at $86 billion per year by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

ActionAid focuses on four key areas of food policy change:

  • We work with governments, international organizations and social movements to promote agricultural development policies that foster food sovereignty in developing countries.
  • ActionAid mobilizes farmers and consumers to demand that emerging global biofuel markets create sustainable opportunities for small farmers without displacing food production.
  • We develop fair and sustainable trade policy alternatives that improve rather than destroy the capacity of farmers in developing country to feed their populations
  • ActionAid campaigns for measures to fight climate change that create stable and effective funds that poor countries can use to adapt their agricultural production to combat the effects of global warming.