Strengthen, implement right to food law: AI

Nepal must strengthen and implement its new law on right to food, if it is to meet its commitments to rid the country of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity, according to a report published by the Amnesty International (AI) today.
The report, which is made public today, presents a detailed analysis of the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act, enacted last September in order to implement the rights relating to food guaranteed under the Constitution. According to Article 36 of the Constitution, every citizen has the right to be safe from the state of being in danger of life from the scarcity of food, and every citizen has the right to food sovereignty in accordance with law.
Hunger was one of the root causes of Nepal’s decade-long internal conflict, and it persists across the country. Nearly half of all the households in Nepal face food insecurity, and a tenth are ‘severely food insecure’. More than a half of all children under five years of age are anaemic, while more than a third of them have stunted growth.
In an important step towards realising its goal of ‘zero hunger’ by 2025, the Nepal government enforced Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act in September.
However, as per AI’s briefing, Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act requires amendment to make it effective. Besides, rules and regulations necessary to implement the provisions of the law need to be formulated.
“If the government of Nepal wants to ensure that no one goes hungry in the country, it must strengthen the law. The mechanisms, such as the rules and regulations, need to be crafted in a way that makes the right to food a reality for all,” said AI South Asia director Biraj Patnaik.
The law needs to be amended to clearly define terms and avoid unnecessary confusion and misinterpretation, which could weaken its effectiveness. As the law stands, it remains unclear what constitutes ‘hunger’ and ‘starvation’.
The report presents recommendations under 16 different topics, covering a range of issues such as increasing scope of legal protection to ensure that the right to food is extended to non-citizens; amending the Act to require an inquiry into any deaths resulting from starvation; and guaranteeing accountability against breach of duty to prevent starvation.
Nepal must also take meaningful steps to prohibit public authorities from interfering with people’s efforts to feed themselves. The law, in its current form, provides little protection to the people as stated in the AI briefing.
It also recommends that the law be specific on how the government will address the threat of starvation. There must be inquiries into any deaths resulting from starvation. It calls for marginalised communities, such as Dalits and land-dependent indigenous peoples, including Tharus, to be granted access to cultivable land.
The briefing recommends that specialised food councils be established throughout the country at national, provincial and local levels to monitor the implementation of the act.
“The authorities have an obligation to prevent malnutrition in all its forms," Patnaik said, adding, "Without addressing these weaknesses of the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act and consulting the appropriate stakeholders, Nepal will not be able to rid an estimated two million people of malnutrition in the country." He also stressed on the urgency to implement the act.
Right to Food was first recognised as an international human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In 1966, the International Covenant on Socio, Political and Economic Rights endorsed Right to Adequate Food. Since then, several other international conventions have endorsed this as a fundamental right. 
Nepal currently ranks 72nd out of 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) which scores countries based on an assessment of the progress and setbacks they have incurred in combating hunger. Over 50 per cent of Nepal's households is food insecure, according to 2016 National Demographic and Health Survey.

Nepal's fight against hunger gets tougher

Unlike last year, this year Nepal performed poorly in the fight against hunger as its score increased to 20.3 from last year's 19.9, according to the Global Hunger Index 2012.
The country still ranks among serious hunger affected, though it had managed to climb one category up from alarming situation last year.
The lower the score, the better the condition of hunger in the country, according to International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that calculates the GHI every year. Countries with extremely alarming have scores of over 30, whereas alarming situation has a score between 20 and 29.9, and serious falls in a score between 10 and 19.9 hunger situation. Similarly, countries with scores of under 10 are moderate and under five are ranked under low. It is based on three equally weighted indicators – the proportion of undernourished as percentage of the population, the prevalence of underweight in children under the age of five, and under five mortality rate.
The index that is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally, and by country and region, highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction and provides insights to the drivers of hunger. By raising awareness and understanding of regional and country differences in hunger, the GHI will, it is hoped, trigger actions to reduce hunger. But no one really knows how many people are malnourished. The statistic, most frequently cited, is that of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which measures 'undernutrition'.
The 2012 Index focuses in particular on the effects that land, water, and energy stress have on global food security, particularly for the world's poorest people. To feed nine billion people — the projected world population in 2050 — who will consume at the rate of 12 billion people if they follow the current consumption pattern of industrialised countries like the United States, it is clear that more food must be produced with fewer resources, and wasteful practices and policies must be eliminated.
The index lays out clear policy recommendations on how to use land, water, and energy for sustainable food security including improving governance of natural resources, scaling up technical approaches to food production and natural resource protection, and addressing the drivers of natural resource scarcity.
Similarly, South Asia has the highest regional 2012 GHI score at 22.5, making it the highest hunger levels of the regions covered in the index.
However, compared with the region’s 1990 GHI score, its 2012 GHI score is 26 per cent lower, indicating improvements in the region’s hunger situation.
Bangladesh, India, and Timor-Leste have the highest prevalence of underweight children under five – more than 40 per cent in each of the three countries, according to the report. "From 2005-2010, India ranked second to last on child underweight, below Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal, and Bangladesh."
China has even lower GHI scores than predicted as it lowered its levels of hunger and undernutrition through a strong commitment to poverty reduction, social security networks, nutrition and health interventions, and improved access to safe water, sanitation, and education.
The 2012 GHI report — the seventh in an annual series — presented a multidimensional measure of global, regional, and national hunger. It showed that progress in reducing the proportion of hungry people in the world has been tragically slow.
According to the index, hunger on a global scale remains 'serious'. The 2012 GHI report also focuses particularly on how to ensure sustainable food security under conditions of land, water, and energy stress. The stark reality is that the world needs to produce more food with fewer resources, while eliminating wasteful practices and policies.

Nepal betters on its fight against hunger

Nepal has improved in the global hunger index (GHI). But this still gives one lots of food for thought as there is still a long way to go.
It ranks 33rd among serious hunger affected country and 55th in the overall global hunger index (GHI) that has 81 countries reviewed in the current year.
Nepal's score improved and managed to climb one category but is still at the bottom of the serious hunger category from alarming situation. Nonetheless, the country is on a winning path in its fight against hunger.
Nepal's score improved to 19.9 this year from last year's 23, when it was under alarming category. In 1990, the country had a score of 27.1 and 1996 score dropped to 24.6 and in 2010 it further dropped due to improving situation.
The lower the score the better the condition of the hunger in the country, according to International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that calculates the GHI every year, countries with extremely alarming have the score over 30, whereas alarming situation has score between 20 and 29.9, serious falls under score between 10 and 19.9 hunger situation. Similarly, the countries with score under 10 are moderate and under five are ranked under low.
“From food deficit situation a fiscal year ago, the country recorded 4,43,000 metric tonnes (MT) of food grains surplus in the last fiscal years," spokesperson of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives Hari Dahal said, adding that the situation is improving lately.
The Index is based on three equally weighted indicators; the proportion of undernourished as percentage of the population, the prevalence of underweight in children under the age of five and the under five-mortality rate.
The 2011 GHI report also revealed how the hunger situation has developed since 1990 at global, regional, and national levels. Globally, the GHI fell over one fourth from 19.7 in 1990 to 14.6 in 2011. The global GHI 2010 had been 15.1 in an average. Regardless of the positive trend, the global fight against hunger is not reaching its goals fast enough, the report said, adding that some 29 countries still have an alarming (20-29.9) or extremely alarming (over 30 score) hunger situation.
The global averages hide dramatic differences among regions and countries. The 2010 GHI had fallen by 18 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa compared with the 1990 GHI, by about 25 per cent in South Asia, and by 39 per cent in the Near East and North Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia share the highest regional GHI scores (22.9 and 21.7 respectively), but food insecurity in the two regions stems from different reasons.In South Asia, the major problem is a high prevalence of underweight children under five, which is a result of lower nutrition and educational status of women. In contrast, the high GHI in Sub-Saharan Africa is due to high child mortality rates and the high proportion of people who cannot meet their calorie requirements because of bad governance, conflicts, political instability and high HIV/Aids rates.
The highest regional GHI score can be found in South Asia. After a rapid decrease between 1990 and 1996, the scores have not changed much despote the economic growth over the same period.
"The progress is inhibited by social inequality and the low nutritional, educational and social status of women," the report said, adding that slightly better numbers in Sub-Saharan Africa stem from the end of a several conflicts in in the 1990s and 2000s, economic growth and successes in fighting Aids.
The Index that is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally and by country and region highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction and provides insights into the drivers of hunger. By raising awareness and understanding of regional and country differences in hunger, the GHI will, it is hoped, trigger actions to reduce hunger.But no one really knows how many people are malnourished. The statistic most frequently cited is that of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which measures 'undernutrition'.
The most recent estimate, released last October by FAO, revealed that 925 million people are undernourished meaning number of hungry people has increased since 1995-97 due to neglect of agriculture relevant to very poor people by governments and international agencies, the current worldwide economic crisis and the significant increase of food prices in the last several years which has been devastating to those with only a few dollars a day to spend.
The 925 million people is 13.1 per cent of the estimated world population of seven billion in the world meaning almost one in seven people are hungry in the world.The FAO estimate is based on statistical aggregates. It first estimates the total food supply of a country and derives the average per capita daily food intake from that. The distribution of average food intake for people in the country is then estimated from surveys measuring food expenditure.
Using the information, and minimum food energy requirements, FAO estimated how many people are likely to receive such a low level of food intake that they are undernourished.
This year's report focused particularly on the issue of food price spikes and volatility, which have played a large role in the global food crises of 2007–08 and 2010–11. Many poor people already spend large shares of their incomes on food, and surges in food prices leave them unable to pay for the food, healthcare, housing, education, and other goods and services they need.An IFPRI researcher describes the factors that have contributed to the increasing and more volatile food prices of recent years and their effects on poor people in developing countries.
Taming food price spikes and volatility will require that is understood as the causes and address them appropriately.