Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
Human rights are a source of states obligations. This is true for the right to food as for any other human
right. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes some of these
obligations as legal obligations under international law.
The general legal obligation appears in article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights: "Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and
through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum
of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights
recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of
legislative measures. "
There are three types of states obligations linked to each human right, including the right to food:
Obligation-to-respect (or respect-bound obligations). Obligation-to-protect (or protect-bound obligations)
and obligations-to-fulfill (or fulfil-bound obligations). What is to be respected, protected and fulfilled
should be clear: It is the basic standard (or normative content) linked to the human right in question - its
first key element.
The obligation to respect existing access to adequate food requires states parties not to take any
measures that result in preventing such access. The obligation to protect requires measures by the
State to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to food.
Whereas the target groups of the obligations to respect and protect access to food are individuals or
groups who enjoy such access, the obligation to fulfil refers to the situation of individuals or groups
deprived of such access.
The fulfilment-bound obligations require that the State must take the necessary measures to guarantee
deprived groups’ access to adequate food and to food producing resources. Under the right to adequate
food, access to food for deprived persons includes access to productive resources including
employment - and the sharing of resources and food in systems of social security (based on the state,
community or family). General Comment 12 insists both on physical and economic access to food and
hence on sharing resources and income. Resource shared could be natural resources (such as land in
a land reform, or water), capital resources, human resources (such as skills), while income sharing
programmes might include minimum income programmes (minimum wage enforcement, employment
programmes, basic income, social security payments), food stamps and food subsidies, or emergency
food aid.
Violations of a human right are breaches of states obligations, in particular breaches of one of the
generic obligations - or a discriminatory way of meeting them. States discriminate, if they make
differences between categories of people when meeting their obligations.
Violations are therefore always an act (or inaction) of states (including their national and international
states’ authorities).
The destruction and/or control of water and biodiversity raises the issue of oppression of marginalized
groups (today and in future), and the issue of related states obligations. The conceptual background
given in this introduction will serve as a tool to consider these questions. Before doing so, however, we
shall take a closer look at the human benefit derived from water and biodiversity and the damaging
effects of current human activities both on water and biodiversity even to the extent of ecodestruction.
FIAN International 102
June 2002