The right to adequate food is exercised when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.71 This authoritative legal interpretation of Article 11 identifies several key characteristics of the right to food, namely: availability, adequacy, accessibility and sustainability, and how they relate to all areas of agrifood systems, including healthy diets and nutritious food, food safety, food production, consumer protection and sociocultural acceptability.

Primarily interpreted as the right to feed oneself in dignity, the right to adequate food is an international human right that has long been recognized and to which numerous countries have committed. In recent decades, several countries have developed and implemented constitutional reforms, national laws, strategies, policies and programmes that aim to realize the right to food for all and encompass quantitative, qualitative and cultural aspects of acceptability.70,72

BACKGROUND

Recognizing the human right to adequate food and the Sustainable Development Goals

The human rights-based 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in September 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, recognizes the realization of the right to food and points the way forward for transformative change. Because nations have the obligation to respect, protect, promote and realize the human right to adequate food, it is relevant to consider that recognizing the right to food in constitutions and developing laws related to food and nutrition security is now crucial to the fulfilment of SDG2. The 2030 Agenda specifically urges with regard to hunger, “By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round”.73

This is why the eradication of hunger has become an urgent and priority issue on the global agenda. Addressing it will require the generation of collective responses and radical changes in the world's agrifood system.

Legal and Regulatory Frameworks for the Realization of the Human Right to Adequate Food

To facilitate the radical transformations needed in today's agrifood systems, "more effective policy frameworks are urgently needed" to achieve food and nutrition security objectives.74 We need to move towards systems that ensure healthy, sufficient and balanced diets that are affordable for the entire population; and to guarantee the right to adequate food for all, leaving no one behind. The human right to adequate food is of fundamental importance for the enjoyment of all rights and translates into obligations for all state bodies.75

71 FAO. Right to food. (https://www.fao.org/right-to-food/en/).72 FAO. 2007. The human right to food. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (https://www.fao.org/3/y7937e/y7937e.pdf).73 United Nations. (2015). Sustainable Development Goals. 17 goals to transform our world: (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/).74 HLPE. (2020). Food security and nutrition: building a global narrative towards 2030. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food

Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. Rome. 110 pages. (https://www.fao.org/3/ca9731en/ca9731en.pdf). 75 FAO. (2010). Guide on Legislating for the Right to Food. Book 1. Rome. 362 pp. Available at: (https://www.fao.org/3/i0815e/i0815e00.pdf).

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