16 October 2009 -- World Food Day was celebrated for the first time in 1981 as a result of a 1979 resolution by FAO members. Since 1997, it is known as World Food/TeleFood Day in an effort to link country members, as well as national and international organisations in mobilising resources to address food security issues.

The right to food, according to international law, is the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed.

The theme for the 2009 World Food Day is “Achieving Food Security in Times of Crisis”.  This celebration is meant to draw attention to the dramatic impact that the worldwide economic crisis of the past years has had on food prices and availability in developing nations.  According to the Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, for the first time in history more than one billion people are undernourished worldwide.  This dramatic increase in hunger has occurred, not as the result of a poor global harvest, but because economic hardship has increased food prices while significantly reducing people’s incomes.  As 70 percent of the world’s hungry now live and work on small-scale farms and in rural areas, hope lies in the form of public and private investment in agriculture, as well as government policy that supports small farmers.  This year’s World Food Day will be about exploring solutions to these troubling recent trends and ensuring that the right to food be protected.

Source: FAO

Selected learning materials

Study Guide on the right to Food & Water
An introduction to the right to food and water, including key definitions, international standards and references to other advocacy, education and training materials.

World Food Day (by Richard Pierre Claude in: Popular Education for Human Rights: 24 Participatory Exercises for Facilitators and Teachers, HREA)
Exercise for a workshop setting about World Food Day (16 October). Participants will learn how to differentiate between "wants" and "needs"; distinguish among: hunger, malnutrition, and starvation; develop some perspectives on global hunger, including the ranking of several countries; develop some comparative skills in analyzing the causes of hunger in your country; devise some policies to respond to issues of hunger, taking "globalization" into account.

Nutrition Rights: The Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition (by George Kent, World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights/University of Hawai'i)
The purpose of this text is to help readers understand the meaning of economic, social and cultural rights through study of the human right to food and nutrition. The text can be used for self-directed learning, in a training or classroom.

International and regional instruments that guarantee the provision of food/prevention of hunger:

- International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) (articles 1, 3, 11, 12)

- General Comment 12, Right to adequate food (1999) (Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights)

- World Declaration and Plan of Action on Nutrition (1992)

- European Social Code (1946), article 42

- African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990), article 14


Useful Links

World Food Day (FAO)

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN)

World Food Program (WFP)

Human Rights Council Resolution: The negative impact of the worsening of the world food crisis on the realisation of the right to food for all