Premium
Food Security: Rights, Livelihoods and the World Food Summit–Five Years Later
Author(s) -
Hussein Karim
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9515.00308
Subject(s) - summit , right to food , food security , livelihood , human rights , political science , vulnerability (computing) , economic growth , food insecurity , development economics , economics , geography , computer security , law , agriculture , archaeology , physical geography , computer science
An international Summit was called for June 2002 aiming to reaffirm the commitments of the 1996 World Food Summit and intensify efforts to halve the number of hungry people in the world to 400 million by 2015. However, progress on achieving this target is open to question. This paper analyses recent policy debates in two areas: first, the right to food and freedom from hunger; and second, the measurement of food insecurity at global and national levels. It agrees that the “World Food Summit–five years later” (WFS–fyl) should reaffirm commitment to the right of all people to food and freedom from hunger and the commitment to raise the resources required to achieve this. A rights–based approach to food security implies that policies be defined and actions taken to reduce hunger by a range of local, non–governmental, governmental and international actors. However, reliable information on who the hungry are and where they are situated is required in order to track progress to WFS targets and identify and implement appropriate actions at the global, national or subnational levels. The inter–agency Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) plays a key role in generating information on trends of the numbers of food–insecure in the world, but the robustness of its “undernourishment” measure has been debated. The paper concludes by outlining practical ways to improve food security analysis, indicating the potential contribution of rights–based and livelihoods approaches.