HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL ADVISORY COMMITTEE DISCUSSES RIGHT TO FOOD

The Human Rights Council Advisory Committee this afternoon discussed requests to the Committee from the Council concerning the right to food and appointed five of its Experts to a drafting group which will respond to a request to elaborate a draft declaration on human rights education and training.

Maarit Kohonen of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) gave a short overview of the work of OHCHR on the right to adequate food. Even before the present global food crisis, the Office had developed partnerships with other UN agencies, especially the Food and Agricultural Organization. Although a lot had been done, substantive challenges still remained such as the identification of best practices on how to integrate a human rights based approach at the country level; concrete application of human rights standards and principles in analyzing the food crisis; in-depth analysis of systemic root causes of the food crisis; impact of the food crisis on other rights, beyond the right to adequate food; and a practical inclusion of a gender perspective.

Jean Ziegler, Advisory Committee Expert, speaking about his experience as the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food, said that the Human Rights Council had entrusted the Advisory Committee with two important mandates. Turning to the tragedy of the food refugees, he noted that these refugees had no legal protection as they were not recognized as legal refugees. They should be able to enjoy a right to temporary non-refoulement. Turning to the causes of this crisis, Mr. Ziegler said that there were essentially three main causes: the speculation on food prices, the biofuel issue and the policy of the International Monetary Fund, which was managing the world debt. The work of the Advisory Committee had to focus on the issue of food refugees, and the setting up of standard norms on temporary non-refoulement.

In the discussion, one Expert said that the economic interests were so enormous now that she was very pessimistic about a positive outcome of the discussion at the Committee. Another Expert said that the Committee was not asked to resolve the problem. The Committee was asked to make recommendations to make the right to food achievable in practice. It was also felt to be premature to discuss whether they should have a working group or a rapporteur on this matter.

Speaking in the general discussion on the right to food were Jean Ziegler, Halima Embarek Warzazi, Vladimir Kartashkin, Emmanuel Decaux, José Antonio Bengoa Cabello, Mona Zulficar and Purificacion Quisumbing.

In the general discussion on human rights education and training, which was started in the morning meeting, Experts spoke about the importance of education, especially in countries with a high illiteracy rate. They also discussed what the added value of a human rights declaration on human rights education and training would be, as there was already a lot included in several conventions, and whether it was the right kind of document that was needed.

Argentina said that the Committee’s task was to elaborate a draft declaration on human rights education and training and it should move right on to this task. Bangladesh said that the Council had entrusted the Advisory Committee to produce a draft or elements to be included in a draft declaration. It did not matter whether it was an actual draft or only a list of elements that should be included in such a draft. Switzerland said that they and Morocco had submitted the resolution in the Human Rights Council because they wanted to send a strong signal that there was no instrument which was dedicated to this end.

Representatives of non-governmental organizations said that the draft declaration should not water down existing treaties and that it should also focus on the right of minorities to be informed about their rights.

The Advisory Committee appointed five of its Experts to the drafting group on a draft declaration on human rights education and training. They are Emmanuel Decaux, Halima Embarek Warzazi, Latif Huseynov, Hector Felipe Fix Fierro and Purificacion Quisumbing.

The Experts speaking this afternoon on human rights education and training were Vladimir Kartashkin, Baba Kura Kaigama, Emmanuel Decaux, José Antonio Bengoa Cabello, Purificacion Quisumbing and Halima Embarek Warzazi.

Also speaking were the delegations of Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Switzerland, Argentina and Mexico.

Representatives of the following non-governmental organizations also took the floor: World Association for the School as an Instrument of Peace, the Indian Council of South America and the International Federation of University Women.


When the Advisory Committee reconvenes at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 6 August, it is scheduled to resume its discussion on the right to food.


General Discussion on Request to Advisory Committee from Human Rights Council to Elaborate a Draft Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training

VLADIMIR KARTASHKIN, Advisory Committee Expert, referred to the earlier discussion about the value of the preparation of a draft declaration on human rights education and training and reminded the Committee that it was obliged to follow the existing resolution of the Human Rights Council to prepare such a declaration. He said a different name for the working group was needed, since the Advisory Committee could not create working groups without the consent of the Council. Five volunteers were needed; so far two had declared their interest.

MIGUEL ALFONSO MARTINEZ, Advisory Committee President, reminded the Committee that they should not break with the tradition that there should be one person from every geographical region in the working group.

BABA KURA KAIGAMA, Advisory Committee Expert, said that during this morning's discussion it seemed like they had been alluding only to formal human rights education. It was noted that in some countries, illiteracy was a big deterrent to understand the issue of human rights. Some people did not even know that they existed. When talking of human rights education, one should also talk about informal education.

SEBASTIAN ROSALES (Argentina) said concerning the mandate of the Advisory Committee, Argentina supported Switzerland and Morocco in their view. The Committee's task was to elaborate a draft declaration on human rights education and training and it should move right on to this task. The norms of declarations were a part of a more lengthy process, but the principal role of the Committee was to provide expertise to the Human Rights Council.

MIGUEL ALFONSO MARTINEZ, Advisory Committee President, commented that the expertise provided by the Committee had to be of quality. Also, they had to bear in mind that instant assessment was not what the Committee was asked to provide. Instant advice like instant coffee was not very good.

MUSTAFIZUR RAHMAN (Bangladesh) said that Bangladesh had found this morning's debate very interesting and it was what was expected out of this body. The Council had entrusted the Advisory Committee to produce a draft or elements to be included in a draft declaration. It did not matter whether it was an actual draft or only a list of elements that should be included in such a draft. The Advisory Committee performed the role of a think tank and was not requested to come up with end products. The Council would then give consideration to the Advisory Committee's outcomes and could give further direction depending on what it would decide. Also, the proposal to form a working group was not against the Council's decisions. But it was felt that such a working group did not need governmental representation in them, as in the end it would be the Council deciding over its outcomes. What was important here was the Experts' views.

Further, a declaration was serious business, it was important to get the work done in a serious manner. If there was a need for extra time to accomplish such an important task there was no need to force the Advisory Committee to be limited by time.

JOAN ERNESTO CHRISTOFOLO (Brazil) said that the work of the Committee was intended to assist the Member States of the Human Rights Council in their work. Any recommendations by the Committee should be implementation oriented. Brazil put special weight on the importance of cooperation as a means of enhancing human rights education. The Committee's work should reflect the importance of this issue in the draft declaration.

EMMANUEL DECAUX, Advisory Committee Expert, said that he did not believe that it was up to the Human Rights Council to engage into micro-management of what the Advisory Committee should do or not. They could decide by themselves how to conduct their work and they had the relevant Council's resolutions which were guiding their work in their hands.

MONIQUE PRINDEZIS, of the World Association for the School as an Instrument of Peace, said that human rights education could not be limited to just one subject or raising awareness of human rights in general. Human rights should be placed in the center of education, human rights through education. The Committee should remember that human rights education was an obligation under existing treaties.

RONALD BARNES, of the Indian Council of South America, said that, pertaining to human rights training, the discussions should also include stakeholders at the regional level. Indigenous people had the right to be educated about their rights. Certain peoples had been denied their right to education as well as their right to self determination. A General Assembly resolution, pertaining to the advancement of education, included the obligation for States to educate and inform people in their territory about their rights. The indigenous peoples had the right to know and speak about the matter their rights, and they also had the right to truly represent themselves. Further, it was noted that the Advisory Committee had the right to make proposals in order to improve its efficiency and its working methods.

CONCHITA PONCINI, of the International Federation of University Women, welcomed the multi-stakeholder-approach that the Committee suggested this morning. The draft declaration should not water down existing treaties. Since women in remote areas were particularly vulnerable, all non-formal means should be used as teaching methods in human rights education. It should start at primary school level and become a lifelong learning process. She underlined that there had to be a gender perspective, as women were disadvantaged. To this end, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women should be borne in mind.

JOSE BENGOA, Advisory Committee Expert, was concerned about whether or not a draft declaration was the right kind document that was needed in order to strengthen human rights education. Further, an absolute necessary first task to accomplish this would be a legal standardization. When there were many different laws and instruments on one same issue in place, it was important to conduct a study and find out what the main common points were. Article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination might well be the most compulsory one; it required that there be formal and informal education on all human rights topics. The Convention on the Rights of the Child also had some important provisions. The training of officials and police forces was also provided for in the provisions of several conventions, such as the Convention against Torture. They should look at the common points of them all so that they could go to the basis of what already existed.

PURIFICACION QUISUMBING, Advisory Committee Expert, said there would be value added by a draft declaration on human rights education, but she stressed that the declaration should not devalue existing treaty obligations. The Committee had to be clear about what the Committee wanted to achieve with such a declaration. The sponsoring States must have had a goal in mind, was it the building of a universal culture of human rights?

ELENA IPPOLITI, of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Research Division, said that this was a question that had to be answered by the Human Rights Council.

HALIMA EMBAREK WARZAZI, Advisory Committee Expert, said that she had nothing to do with the decision taken by her Ambassador when he had drafted the resolution, so she could not know what he wished to see come out of it, but in her view the draft declaration should be a progressive draft and not a regressive one. Thus they should not only look at what had been done in other treaties. What was also needed was information about the activities that had been carried out by the national institutions, what the difficulties were in their implementation, and what had been successful and what not.

MURIEL BERSET (Switzerland) said Switzerland and Morocco had submitted the resolution in the Human Rights Council because they wanted to send a strong signal that there was no instrument which was dedicated to this end. A declaration was chosen as the best possible means since they were not ready for a different means that would be farther-reaching.

SEBASTIAN ROSALES (Argentina) said that rewriting existing documents would weaken the human rights system. The resolution had a political aim and the Advisory Committee had to focus on protection gaps. The draft should include issues that were not included in other documents.

JOSE GUEVARA (Mexico) said that the resolution that was adopted by the Human Rights Council sent a very strong signal in the field of human rights education. It gave the possibility of a participative approach and it took into account the already existing treaties and instruments.

VLADIMIR KARTASHKIN, Advisory Committee Expert, proposed to have a break in order to give regional groups the possibility to propose candidates for the working group.

General Debate on Request to Advisory Committee from Human Rights Council on Right to Food

MAARIT KOHONEN, of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), gave a short overview of the work of OHCHR on the right to adequate food. The work on the right to food was supported by the Research and Right to Development Division in relation to developing the High Commissioner's and OHCHR's institutional position, policy, advocacy and research on the right to food and the Special Procedures Division in terms of supporting the independent expert, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

Even before the global food crisis, the Office had developed partnerships with other UN agencies, especially the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). OHCHR was also currently working with UNICEF in the organization of an expert consultation on a human rights based approach to the global food crisis to be held on 28-29 August in New York.

The former High Commissioner and the Acting High Commissioner had taken a leadership role in advocating for a human rights-based response to the global food crisis. Whilst the Office had been giving support to the Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, however, it was not a member. The Task Force developed with OHCHR's support the Comprehensive Framework for Action, which included certain elements on human rights.

OHCHR also supported various United Nations human rights mechanisms, such as the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate food Olivier de Schutter. Mr. de Schutter took over this mandate from Jean Ziegler on 1 May 2008 and shortly after the Human Rights Council held a special session on the issue. Responding to the Human Rights Council special session resolution, the High Commissioner and the Special Rapporteur had participated at the FAO's High Level Conference on World Food Security held in Rome on 3-5 June.

Although a lot had been done, substantive challenges still remained such as the identification of best practices on how to integrate a human rights based approach at country level; concrete application of human rights standards and principles in analyzing the food crisis; in-depth analysis of systemic root causes of the food crisis; impact of food crisis on other rights, beyond the right to adequate food; and a practical inclusion of a gender-perspective.

JEAN ZIEGLER, Advisory Committee Expert, speaking about his experience as the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food, said that the Human Rights Council had entrusted the Advisory Committee with two mandates. One of the relevant resolutions that came out of the Human Rights Council special session on the right to food had stemmed from the Cuban delegation. He had contacted the Cuban mission and had asked them what they were expecting from this resolution. For them, it was important to understand why there had been such a high rise in food prices since the beginning of this year.

Turning to the tragedy of the food refugees that were trying to flee from hunger, currently taking place in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, he underscored that hundreds of people were dying while trying to flee. These refugees had no legal protection as they were not recognized as legal refugees. They should be able to enjoy a right to temporary non-refoulement. This situation of food refugees was a continuation of a first hunger tragedy, which had been taken up in the Human Rights Council in past years. Every day 100,000 people were dying from hunger and in 2007 every 5 seconds a child was dying from hunger, noted Mr. Ziegler.

Now in 2008, after the explosion of food prices, the price of rice had for example doubled between January and April, said Mr. Ziegler. A ton of rice had surpassed the figure of a thousand dollars in the world market. The prices indicated by the World Bank were so called "Free On Board" prices. To get the real price, one had to add transport prices, which had also exploded due to the rise in oil prices. There were 2.2 billion people living in extreme poverty. In places like Lima, families were spending 90 percent of their family budget on food. Southern countries especially, like Haiti, had no financial means to soften the impact of the crisis. Nowadays, some 6 million Haitians had no access to basic food.

Turning to the causes of this crisis, Mr. Ziegler said that there were essentially three main causes. The first cause was the speculation. The New York Times had recently titled one of its articles "Food is Gold". The biggest hedge funds and traders had now moved from the New York Stock Exchange to the Commodity Exchange in Chicago. It was clear that staple food had a market price which was being negotiated on the principle of maximisation of profit. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) believed that about 37 percent of the increase in the prices of rice and wheat was a result of speculation. The International Monetary Fund stated that it was 29 percent.

The second cause was the biofuel issue. Mr. Ziegler pointed out the fact that the United States had burnt hundreds of tons of maize and wheat in order to produce biofuels. While he was not a fan of US President George W. Bush, he could still understand him when he was saying that he wanted to be free from oil which was located in unstable countries. Witnessing climate change, one had to change the use of gasoline with fuels that did not destruct the biosphere. But here in the Advisory Committee, they had to focus on the realization of the right to food. The case of Brazil was different as they were using sugar cane to produce biofuels, which was not a primary food. Further, the European Union had taken a directive, which in his opinion was scandalous, that by 2020, 12 percent of the oil used should be biofuel. As the European Union was not able to produce such an amount of biofuel, it meant that Africa would have to produce it.

The third cause was the policy of the International Monetary Fund, which was managing the world debt. This policy was forcing countries to adopt policies of exporting agricultural products. This policy was to their detriment and was not in line with the right to food, said Mr. Ziegler.

Turning to the first mandate the Advisory Committee had received from the Council, Mr. Ziegler noted that they had a lot of work before them. One should not allow the markets to be able to speculate on basic food prices. Further, the Working Group should work very intensively with the UNCTAD people. Also, transformation of staple food into biofuels should be banned. One child could live for one year with the food being burnt to fill the tank of one car.

On the issue of food refugees, who were currently called illegal immigrants, the European Union had been reacting using military means. This was a totally inadequate response. Food refugees were leaving their countries because they were no longer able to live there. There was a right to asylum and non-refoulement that was granted for someone who was persecuted for political or religious issues, but nothing for starving people. The World Food Programme, every three months, produced maps of the places where the right to food could not be respected. These maps showed where those people were. There was an existing notion of the state of need; this could be applied to food refugees. A setting of standard norms was needed on temporary non-refoulement. While many had told him to forget about these norms and that they would never be adopted, he did not agree. He had participated in several meetings at Government level and several countries, like Spain, would be happy to have such United Nations norms in place.

In conclusion, Mr. Ziegler said that the mandates they had received were very specific and important. The Advisory Committee should come up with proposals to deal with these horrible tragedies.

HALIMA EMBAREK WARZAZI, Advisory Committee Expert, reminded the Committee that the Sub-Commission had raised the issue of the right to adequate food 24 years ago. It was then decided that this was an absolute right. But the economic interests were so enormous now that she was very pessimistic about a positive outcome of the discussion at the Committee.

VLADIMIR KARTASHKIN, Advisory Committee Expert, answered that the Committee was not asked to resolve the problem. The Committee was asked to make recommendations to make the right to food achievable in practice. Since every Committee Expert had expertise in a certain area, certain Experts should take responsibility for certain issues.

EMANUEL DECAUX, Advisory Committee Expert, said that it would be premature to discuss whether they should have a working group or a rapporteur on this matter. He wondered what the two mandates Jean mentioned were as he did not see where the food refugees mandate was coming from.

JEAN ZIEGLER, Advisory Committee Expert, answered that it was contained in a resolution of the Council's seventh session of March of this year. It requested the Council to study the question of hunger refugees. He also noted that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was carrying excellent work in the protection and help to food refugees. They were a new type of refugees but no one wanted to add a sentence to the Convention on Refugees to offer protection to this type of refugees. Still, there was an office at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees dealing with this issue and the Advisory Committee should work in close cooperation with them.

JOSE BENGOA, Advisory Committee Expert, said that the Committee had to decide tomorrow how to move on because the substance had to be discussed first. The global food crisis had to be read through the prism of human rights. Referring to article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Expert said that the Committee had to go in-depth into the matter and with the most appropriate instruments such as the Covenant. It was not perspectives that came from the world economy that were decisive for this Committee, but instruments such as the Covenant.

MONA ZULFICAR, Advisory Committee Expert, said that this was a top-priority issue and should be discussed tomorrow. The issue was extremely broad being an emergency for refugees but also for people suffering from hunger in African countries. It would be difficult to come up with good recommendations, since it was a basic conflict between human rights and economic interests. She added that there were other issues to be discussed as women and children were especially vulnerable to hunger.

PURIFICACION QUISUMBING, Advisory Committee Expert, said that it was a very unrealistic but also a very important request from the Human Rights Council to the Committee to draft a proposal. She asked what else the Committee could do to enhance the right to adequate food and called on the Committee Experts to be modest in the scope of what could be done.


For use of the information media; not an official record

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