book1

Background
Food security and freedom from hunger is considered as a fundamental
human right in interna� onal human rights trea� es including the Universal
Declara� on of Human Rights (1948), the Interna� onal Covenant on
Economic Social and Cultural Rights (1966) and the Conven� on on the Rights
of the Child (1989). Feeding the hungry that are unable to feed themselves is
almost universally regarded as a compelling moral obliga� on. Interna� onal
community has well recognized this issue as one of the most important goals
of the Millennium Declara� on is to halve propor� on of people who suff er
from hunger by 2015 1 . Since then food security has become one of the key
issues in policy debates par� cularly in developing countries.
The World Food Summit held in 1996 precisely defi ned the concept of
food security as a situa� on when all people, at all � mes, have physical, social
and economic access to suffi cient, safe and nutri� ous food to meet their
dietary needs and food preferences for an ac� ve and healthy life 2 . Thus, food
security is a mul� dimensional socio-economic phenomenon that integrates
at least following four interrelated components
- availability of food,
- physical and economic access to food,
- biological u� liza� on of the food and
- stability of food supply.
For a long � me, food security meant ensured availability of food (through
produc� on, imports or food aid). A� er Amartya Sen’s seminal work, Poverty
and famines (1981), it has increasingly been understood that the availability
of suffi cient food in the right place and at the right � me is a necessary
condi� on, but it is not suffi cient to avoid hunger. A well-stocked food market
is irrelevant to those who do not have enough income to purchase food.
Similarly, enough income may also ma� er less if insuffi cient food is available
in the market. Households and individuals must always have physical and
economic access to food through their own produc� on, purchases in the
marketplace or transfers via social safety nets.
Recent thinking has added to the concept of u� liza� on as a dimension
of food security. Adequate access to food ma� ers li� le, if people have poor
physiological ability to u� lize the food they intake due to their poor health
and sanita� on status. Thus non-food inputs such as educa� on, clean drinking
water, sanita� on and health care are considered equally important for food
security. Finally, stability is also an essen� al element of food security because
even temporary interrup� ons of food availability, access or u� liza� on can
have serious long-term consequences. Household food security is meant to
apply these concepts to the family level, with individuals within households
as the focus of concern.
Food insecurity is a situa� on opposite to the above where people lack
1. United Na� ons Millennium Development Goals (www.un.org/millenniumgoals).
2. WFS (1996). Declara� on of the World Food Summit 1996 (Para. 1)
Changing paradigms of aid eff ec� veness in Nepal 167