The Ecology of Food and Nutrition, Vol.44, No.3, 2005.
ABSTRACT
Governments have failed to successfully tackle malnutrition; are NGOs supposed to be different? This is not clear; few NGOs have been able to affect the human rights violations behind the malnutrition suffered by millions of losers under Globalization. NGOs should be working to revert this process. There is now recognition of the political roots of violations of the right to adequate food and nutrition (now rightly understood in terms of powerlessness). Apathy towards these issues indeed turns our work stagnant. Putting our energies on top-down interventions does not promote people’s rights. Poverty, ill-health and malnutrition represent a denial of human rights on a massive scale. Should this fact not make a difference in (y)our work?
Years come and go. But world hunger and malnutrition have a ‘nagging habit’ to keep coming and not go. Efforts to reduce chronic hunger in developing countries are not currently on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals. (FAO, 2004). The question is, is it really just a ‘habit’ or a strike of fate? Governments have long failed to prevent this – we have heard this ad-nauseam and I have here written two previous commentaries on these issues (Schuftan, 2003 and Schuftan a), 2003). But what about NGOs? Are they not supposed to be different?
NGOs, Globalization and human rights-needed changes:
It is not clear whether, today, the NGO concept has the potential to deliver the structural and human rights changes needed under the current ‘conditions-of-Globalization’. These conditions are destroying livelihoods. Globalization is neither a natural process nor an inclusive one; it is rather a planned project, and, at that, one of exclusion. Growth through Globalization is importantly based on the theft of people’s resources, knowledge and economies. In the Globalization paradigm, the protection of people and the protection of nature are replaced by corporate protectionism. The rules of this imposed market-competition-dogma simply transform all aspects of life into markets. (Shiva, V., 2003) Moreover, social and employment concerns are never brought to the forefront in the process of Globalization. Globalization does not create jobs; as a matter of fact, it is a hotbed of anti-union activity.
Under Globalization, change creates both (a few) winners and (an army of) losers. It therefore behooves NGOs to work on strategies to revert this process and to find ways to work with the current losers in interventions that more proactively distribute the benefits of change more equitably.
Inequalities are of such a magnitude that reallocating a relatively small part of the income of the 10% richest group (e.g., through progressive taxation, property taxes, luxury goods taxation, a Tobin-type tax, land reform) can potentially make a big dent in the income of the poorest 20%. (The inequalities referred to here often arise from the rich being made better-off at a faster pace than the poor) (Latham and Beaudry, 2001).
The bare fact is that poor people are excluded from their share in the wealth they help to create. That is why, to halve hunger and malnutrition by 2015, the distribution of wealth is as important (if not more) as its creation.
In the free-market-world-economy-we-live-in, Third World countries are not being given the benefits they and their economies need, but rather what-ideologically-motivated-Northern-trade-partners believe they should give them. Conversely, in the local economy, only those who have something to sell – and are not hindered in selling it (!) – can earn anything from trade to allow them to feed themselves and their families.
The issue of governance:
Often, human rights (and food and nutrition) work also ends up calling for better governance. But this concept is interpreted to mean many different things. For the developed countries of the North, it means shaping states’ policies worldwide so as to create the environments-most-favorable-to-the-opening-up-of-the-countries-of-the-South-to-globalized-free-markets! It means forcing the hand of these countries to adopt neoliberal economic policies. The aim here is not really to foster greater democratic participation, but rather state-sponsored market deregulation.
As understood from a human rights perspective, the hallmarks of good governance are: democratic and impartial institutions; the diffusion of information to the public; transparency in decision-making; the participation of all actors; free and fair elections; efficient management of resources; expert competence in assessing situations; accountability; integrity; AND explicit respect for human (people’s) rights including the right to adequate food and nutrition. These hallmarks will be sought in vain as long as the structural obstacles that prevent the vast majority of countries of the world from exercising their right to development and to democracy are not removed.
The public nutrition discourse in 2005 (and beyond):
If the context and the conceptual framework of our public nutrition discourse are wrong, discussions and actions based on the wrong analyses will be like pouring water into a broken vessel; no amount of effort to fill it will be sufficient.
Respecting and fulfilling the right to adequate food and nutrition has a cost indeed – maybe even in terms of economic growth foregone. But solidarity, fairness and justice are also values that count – perhaps more than growth – when wealth is relentlessly concentrating in fewer and fewer hands: Disparities in global income are simply worsening and so is the number of the malnourished.
Violations of the right to adequate food and nutrition are varied and dynamic; they and/or their character and intensity change over time. For sure, there is now a greater recognition of the political roots of these violations, and these clearly change over time as do power and wealth relations.
Therefore, vulnerability to the right to adequate food and nutrition violations is now rightly understood more in terms of powerlessness rather than simply as a lack of food or other resources to uphold and sustain this right. People are most vulnerable when their livelihoods and coping strategies are blocked, or when their group identity, political position or material circumstances make them particularly exposed to exploitation and hunger.
For the right to adequate food and nutrition to be upheld under any political system, decision-makers and political leaders need to be monitored. (Note that holding elections and embracing a multi-party system does not necessarily by itself guarantee more democracy or, for that matter, a better food and nutrition agenda and programs). [In keeping an eye on their decisions, beware that duty-bearers often suffer from selective blindness, selective deafness, selective silence and selective amnesia. (Shiva, M., 2003)].
What this means is that the achievement of human (people’s) rights has to be the overarching objective of development processes – the right to adequate food and nutrition right there at the forefront.
[…And related to what Development with a capital D ought to be, have you noticed that no actual Development Strategies are announced anymore? Only ‘goals’! But goals are not strategies! They are statistical objectives. You can only achieve a goal if the path to it is described… Therefore, I contend that the Millennium Development Goals are primarily a rhetorical device. You disagree? Then, consider for a moment that – for the specific poverty reduction MDG – even those who pass the $1/day mark by 2015 may still stay between 1-2 dollars a day…forever].
Towards a 2005 new year’s resolution:
Apathy towards these issues can indeed turn our work into stagnation. We need to transform-apathy-into-activism and to consolidate-negotiated-social-contracts between people (as claim-holders for better food and nutrition) and their representatives (or purported representatives) at all levels (as duty-bearers).
We need to shift our attention from just reaching-the-poor-merely-as-an-extension-of-the-prevailing-paradigm to a-deeper-understanding-of-the-issues-of-poverty-and-inequality-and-their-underlying-processes. What ultimately counts is our social and political accountability and our public nutrition work in true partnership with the poor.
We also need to explicitly recognize that political-processes-and-issues-of-power determine the content, direction and implementation of the right to adequate food and nutrition policies and programs. Together with the marginalized and poor, as public nutrition activists, we can and should become strong political players instead of implicitly protecting narrow group interests through our work under the wings of governments, industry and international agencies that are most often unmindful of the real interests of the poor and hungry, despite their (and our) public statements to the contrary. (Narayan, 2003)
Actually, to make nutrition services work for the poor, the poor need more control over those services. This, because nutrition services, if available at all, are failing poor people; governments are simply spending too little on poor people.
The side on which we ought to be in this struggle is clear. Putting our energies on improving the provision of food and nutrition services for the poor from the top down is not an intervention that promotes people’s rights per-se (be it in the micro-nutrient of protein-energy malnutrition realm!).
For us in public nutrition work, poverty is related not only to its economic aspects, but is multi-dimensional. It is related to powerlessness, to not-being-counted, to not-being-considered, to being-excluded, to being-unheard. Poverty is related to exploitation, oppression, victimization and violence. It is also related to migration, forced displacement, rising urbanization and loss of livelihoods. (Conclusion, AIFO document cited in the references, 2003)
Poverty and malnutrition being forced on individuals and families who do not have any other choice is unequivocally linked to injustice – and potentially to rebellion. It represents a-denial-of-human-rights-on-a massive-scale. Should this fact not make a difference in (y)our everyday work?
A final reflection:
The truth is that the right to adequate food and nutrition is often impeded by “wrong” social and political attitudes and structures or adverse environments in those domains. The needs-based approach looks for causal factors rather than for ‘deliberate acts by evil actors’. (Johan Galtung). Closely scrutinizing the accountabilities of duty-bearers, the human rights-based approach looks for both.
The primary role of the human rights-based approach is to make people aware of what-is-basically-wrong and what processes are leading them to a hunger and malnutrition situation that does not need to be. And when this is widely acknowledged, it has to be pointed out to people that there are legally-recognized-and-binding-instruments-to-right-these-wrongs. Ergo, the poor and marginalized have legitimate claims in the struggle for the fulfillment of their needs (in our case for adequate food and nutrition).
Ultimately, rights-are-justified-claims towards the protection of persons’ most basic needs and dearest interests; they are justified-priorities-that-give-people-basic-claiming-capabilities to achieve them; rights convey respect to persons-as-choosers, as active rights-claiming, choice-making agents.
Are we up to the task?
Claudio Schuftan MD, Ho Chi Minh City.
schuftan@gmail.com
References:
FAO (2004). SOFI 2004 Report. http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5650e/y5650e00.htm.
Latham, M. and Beaudry, M. (2001). Globalization and Inequity as Determinants of Malnutrition. EFN, 40(6), 597-618.
Narayan, T. (2003). in Poverty, Health and Development, Health Cooperation Paper No. 17, AIFO, Bologna, Italy.
Schuftan, C. (2003). Commentary: Human Rights Based Planning, The New Approach. EFN, 42(1), 3-7
Schuftan, C. a). (2003) Commentary: Stepping into the New Age of the Right to Good Nutrition: Snail Pace Progress? EFN, 42(3), 255-263.
Shiva, M. (2003). in Poverty, Health and Development, Health Cooperation Paper No. 17, AIFO, Bologna, Italy.
Shiva, V. (2003). in Poverty, Health and Development, Health Cooperation Paper No. 17, AIFO, Bologna, Italy.