Food (Right to)

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On December 7, 2011, The Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN  released the report it has submitted to the United Nations (UN) titled "Human Rights in India: An Overview." Click here for more information and a copy of the report.

Country: 
Brazil

An international fact-finding mission organized by Rights & Democracy in collaboration with La Coordinadora de integración de organizaciones económicas, campesinas, indígenas y originarias de Bolivia (CIOEC) arrives in Bolivia.

This case was brought on behalf of Shanti Devi, a women living in poverty from a Scheduled Caste, after she died as the result of being refused adequate maternal healthcare despite the fact that she qualified for the free services under existing state-sponsored schemes. In 2008, Shanti Devi was forced to carry a dead fetus in her womb for five days after being denied medical treatment at several hospitals because her husband was unable to show a valid ration card for medical services, despite being qualified for one as they lived below the poverty line.

Les mouvements sociaux et organisations de la société civile signataires approuvent la décision du Conseil des Droits de l’Homme des Nations Unies, sur proposition du nouveau Rapporteur spécial sur le droit à l’alimentation, de tenir une session spéciale concernant l’impact de la crise alimentaire mondiale sur la réalisation du droit à l’alimentation, le 22 mai 2008 à Genève.   

The undersigned social movements and civil society organizations welcome the decision of the UN Human Rights Council, upon request of the new UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to food, to hold a special session on the negative impact of the world food crisis on the realization of the right to food, which took place on May 22nd in Geneva.

The Yakye Axa community, a Paraguayan indigenous community belonging to the Lengua Enxet Sur people, filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) alleging Paraguay had failed to acknowledge its right to property over ancestral land. Given its impossibility to solve the case, the Commission referred it to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The communication alleged that the military government of Nigeria was guilty of, amongst other things, violations of the right to health, the right to dispose of wealth and natural resources, the right to a clean environment and family rights, due to its condoning and facilitating the operations of oil corporations in Ogoniland.  

Starvation deaths had occurred in the state of Rajasthan, despite excess grain being kept for official times of famine, and various schemes throughout India for food distribution were also not functioning. In 2001, the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) petitioned the court for enforcement of both the food schemes and the Famine Code, a code permitting the release of grain stocks in times of famine. They grounded their arguments on the right to food, deriving it from the right to life.