FIAN Norge

With the world still trapped in a multifold crisis, this year’s Right to Food and Nutrition Watch will take stock of the past decade and present thought-provoking discussions and alternative solutions for finding our way out.

Described by many as a watershed moment, a decade has passed since a major food price crisis shook the entire world. Back then, international prices of all major food commodities reached their highest level in nearly 30 years, pushing the number of people living in hunger to one billion, and compromising the fundamental human rights of many more. And although some thought it to be an occasional conjuncture and the language of
crisis was on everyone’s lips, the truth is that the events of 2007/2008 simply brought the cracks of an unsustainable, broken food system into view that had been there for a long time.

This ‘crisis’ which many have referred to as a multifold food, fuel, finance, climate and even a human rights crisis forced policy-makers to
acknowledge its failures and international institutions to take a step back for reflection

Despite some progress, many of the same problems that led to the crisis in the first place persist. Today, ten years later, the socio-economic
rationale behind dominant production, distribution and consumption models remain untouched, and the guarantee of the rights to food and nutrition, water, land and other territories, as well as the rights to health, social security and a healthy environment, remain secondary to profit.

Entitled The World Food Crisis: The Way Out, this years Right to Food and Nutrition Watch marks its tenth anniversary by taking stock of the past decade and looking into the challenges and opportunities anticipated for the coming period. The publication reflects the struggles of social movements and civil society organizations to transform food systems under the auspices of human rights, solidarity, social, climate and gender justice. Ten articles, ten images, illustrating ten crucial issues of the ongoing multifold crisis, will aim to contribute to the struggle for the realization of the right to food and nutrition and food sovereignty, and to finding our way out once for all.

Commenting on the publication, Jamesina E. L. King, Commissioner and Chairperson of the Working Group on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights says: “This publication presents a diversity of analyses and
examples of grassroots’ struggles to guarantee the right to food, alleviate hunger and promote dignity around the world, including in the African continent. The Watch seeks to be unique in its field and its conceptual analyses could promote academic debates, social movements’ discussions, dialogue with policymakers, and eventually, transformation “.

The Watch is available online here and also in hard copies from FIAN Norway’s office in Oslo. Send us an e-mail if you’d like a copy at post(at)fian.no.

Photo by Krishnasis Gosh. The photo was submitted to Biodiversity International’s photo contest:’Women and Agricultural Biodiversity’.

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