Launched in 2011 by Graduate Institute Publications with Palgrave (UK), the International Relations and Development Series is a new peer-reviewed book series focusing on global issues in the Institute’s areas of study. It aims to promote research concentrating on global and multi-level governance, involving the United Nations and other international organisations as well as key regions and regional organisations. The series combines disciplinary with interdisciplinary perspectives.

The first book in the series “The Fight for the Right to Food: Lessons Learned” was written by Jean Ziegler, the United Nations first Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000-2008 and former teacher at the Institute, Christophe Golay and Claire Mahon, research fellows at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Sally-Anne Way, Research Director at the Centre for Economic and Social Rights.

On the occasion of the book’s release Graduate Institute Publications interviewed the authors.

What is the Right to Food?
The right to food is one of the most fundamental human rights. It was recognised for the first time in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. It is the right to live in dignity, free from hunger. It protects the right of peasants to have access to productive resources and the right of workers to be paid a decent wage.

What is the originality of this book, compared to other books on the right to food?
Few books have been published on the right to food. The originality of this book lies in the fact that it builds on the work of the first United Nations’ Special Rapporteur and his team on the right to food from 2000 to 2008. It describes the evolution of the right to food since 2000 and the lessons learned from missions undertaken in countries as diverse as Niger, Ethiopia, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Cuba, the Palestinian Occupied Territory, Lebanon, India, Bangladesh and Mongolia.

Which lessons did you learn from your work on the right to food?
One of the most important lessons that we learned is that in a world that is richer than ever before and already produces more than enough food to feed the global population, we need political solutions, rather than complicated technical solutions to eradicate hunger. Eradicating hunger is not only a question of finding resources and developing new technologies. It is also a question of challenging structural injustices, inequities of power and economic inequalities. In the last decades, States and international organisations have adopted two very different approaches to respond to world hunger, based on social justice and human rights or the “Washington Consensus” emphasizing liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. We describe this schizophrenic situation and conclude that only a normative approach, based on the right to food is appropriate to fight hunger efficiently. As Rousseau wrote, “between the rich and the poor, it is freedom which oppresses and it is law which liberates”.

What was the evolution of the realisation of the right to food in the last decade? Did some regions or countries do better than others? Why?
Despite the commitments made at the World Food Summit in 1996 and in the Millennium Declaration in 2000, hunger continued to increase over the last decade. In the today’s world, one child under ten years old dies from hunger every five seconds. 25,000 people die from hunger or related causes every day. And over one billion people are gravely and permanently undernourished. Few countries have decided to fight hunger and its structural causes – discrimination and economic, social and political exclusion – in the last decade. Most of the countries that have done so are in Latin America. As the example of Bolivia shows, when a strong political will is combined with a very creative civil society, progress towards the full realization of the right to food can be achieved.

Christophe Golay and Claire Mahon are research fellows at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, jointly established by the Graduate Institute and the University of Geneva and directed by Institute Professors Andrew Clapham and Paola Gaeta.

Christope Golay holds a PhD in International Law from the Gradaute Institute. Claire Mahon holds a Master in International Law from the Institute.

Jean Ziegler previously taught at one of the Institute's predecessor's, the Graduate Institute of Development Studies.