Civil society organisations call for a turnaround in global decision-making on food and nutrition

The global report Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2012, with the title “Who Decides About Global Food and Nutrition? – Strategies to Regain Control”, gives a multitude of examples of the severe violations of the right to food and nutrition that the current food system is provoking: from forced evictions and land grabbing by companies or corrupted members of governments, as illustrated by the articles on Mexico and on the Arab Spring, to inappropriate food supply programs or speculative investments in agro fuels, described in the articles on Bangladesh, Paraguay and the Philippines.

“Food and power are related. It is almost impossible to find one person among the powerful in society and politics worldwide, who does not have enough to eat”, said Huguette Akplogan-Dossa, the Regional Coordinator of the African Network on the Right to Food (ANoRF). “The tendency is for exclusion from economic and political decision-making to go hand in hand with incidence of hunger and malnutrition”.

“Those who protest because they have been deprived of their land and cannot feed their family from their work are often arrested and victims of violence. This is unacceptable”, said Gerald Staberock, Secretary General of the World Organisation against Torture (OMCT).

Changing decision-making process

“We can no longer accept chronic hunger or food riots being portrayed as consequences of natural disasters or anonymous market failures”, stated Lalji Desai from the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Nomadic Pastoralists (WAMIP) based in India. “The terrible living conditions for hundreds of millions of people actually are caused by the loss of control over their food and nutrition, and that’s why we struggle for our right to self-determination and food sovereignty”.

The Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2012 focuses on exposing who is really in control of decision and policy-making when it comes to food and nutrition. “Far too often, agribusinesses and nutrition companies use their weight and influence to increase their profit margins, and to manipulate the rules to their interests and convenience, without regard for the best interests of small-scale food producers and the survival of their communities – let alone the moral and legal requirements of the human right to food”, observed Peter Prove, Executive Director of the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA).

In reaction, social movements and other expressions of civil society have engaged in strategies to regain people’s control over food and nutrition. “With the reform of the Committee on World Food Security, an innovative way of inclusive governance has been established. It has been a breakthrough for those civil society groups that traditionally have been excluded from decision-making processes on all levels”, said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN International. “The time has come to occupy political space and fight for the primacy of human rights”.

Private sector and global governance

The private sector and some international NGOs have gained unprecedented influence in global governance while States have seen a clear decline in their influence. The ostensible explanation given for the close interaction with the corporate and private sector is the “scarcity” of public funds. However, this scarcity applies only to funding development as sufficient public funds are made available for corporate bailouts. One key result of this increased influence has been the making of PPPs (Public Private Partnerships) the number one strategy to manage the health and nutritional needs of the world’s population. In recent years the UN has emerged as one of the principal proponents of PPPs (more often than not contracted with for profit entities). These PPPs are considered by many to be a necessary and ideal instrument to fund development work. However, a deeper analysis reveals the multiple (sometimes contradictory) agendas and conflicting interests involved.

PPPs have further reinforced selective programs by focusing on non-sustainable techno-centric and market-based solutions to single issues while not addressing the social determinants of health and nutrition. PPPs have shown to be incapable of promoting and supporting horizontally-integrated sector-wide approaches with an explicit commitment to strengthening local service delivery systems and to respond to locally determined needs. It is necessary to build new alliances with civil society, with people’s organisations and with social movements in fostering the right to nutrition. Democratic participation should have the central place in decision-making in the provision of all social services. Because the partner supplying the finance in these projects tends to have a disproportionate amount of power in decision-making, democratic participation cannot be guaranteed in the PPP model. Another basic flaw is that PPPs often focus on piecemeal technical and market driven solutions that provide clear benefits for participating corporations, but questionable benefits for target populations while ignoring the social roots of their problems.