Child Hunger and Human Rights

Clair Apodaca

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136994807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Child Hunger and Human Rights: International Governance applies the human rights theory of legal obligation to the problem of child malnutrition and investigates whether duty-bearers have fulfilled their obligations to protect, respect and provide.

This book includes moral, economic, political and legal components to the research on the child's right to be free from hunger. Using two methods of investigation; the first a historical comparative method based on the systematic analysis of the content of historical materials, government documents, policy statements, state budgets, newspaper reports and other public records, and the second is statistical analysis. Apodaca investigates beyond the suffering, deformities, and deaths of children, to child malnutrition resulting in reduced physical and mental development threatening the child's life opportunities, the prospects of further generations, and the growth of the economy.

Examining the connection between governmental agricultural, economic and financial policies, international donor policies, and transnational corporate voluntary codes of conduct affecting child malnutrition rates, this book will be of interest to policy-makers, activists, students and scholars of human rights, social justice, international ethics, development, international relations and law.

1
Child hunger and the rights-based approach

Hunger and malnutrition are the underlying cause of more than half of all child deaths, killing nearly 6 million children each year.

FAO 2005

Food is the most basic of children’s needs and is central to their health, growth and development. Yet, as noted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, hunger and malnutrition are the underlying causes of more than half of all children’s deaths worldwide. In 2001, it was estimated that a child dies every seven seconds as a result of either direct or indirect effects of hunger (UN General Assembly 2001). Child hunger is caused, or at least not prevented, in large part, by government policies (for instance, governmental spending on the military rather than on social services), international policies (restricted trade or procurement-tied aid, for example), and even non-governmental actors’ behaviors (transnational corporations buying public lands or cutting forests displacing indigenous peoples). The human right to food can be located in the human rights framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child hunger as a violation of human rights occurs when public or private agents fail to meet their obligations to respect, protect, or fulfill the right to food.

A comprehensive rights-based approach to child hunger ensures respect for and protection of the human rights of children. The elimination of child hunger, using a human rights approach, positions the child as a subject with legitimate claims and entitlements¹ to food against the state as primary, but not exclusive, duty-bearer. International law, underpinned by the principle of state sovereignty, places primary responsibility on the state to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of those persons within its jurisdiction. The legal obligations imposed by the human right to food are obligations of conduct and result. The International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, thus establish a monitoring system that pressures governments to comply with the treaty provisions. However, the elimination of child hunger will require concerted action by state, international, and transnational actors.

Child hunger ²

Chronic hunger and malnutrition affect the lives and futures of millions of children every year. A child’s right to food, to be free from hunger, can be justified not only on moral grounds, but also in economically and politically instrumental terms. Beyond the suffering, deformities, and deaths of children, child malnutrition results in reduced physical and mental development threatening the child’s life opportunities, the prospects of further generations, and the growth of the economy.

Morally, children are innocent and, therefore, not responsible for the unfortunate circumstances in which they live. Jonsson (1996) explains that under a duty-based theory of rights, a child would have a right to food as a result of moral obligations. Children have a right to food by virtue of the fact that they are children. At the moral minimum, a child has a right to his/her life. Food is a basic requirement for life, and chronic hunger reduces a child’s chance of survival. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, “children who are mildly underweight are about twice as likely to die of infectious diseases as children who are better nourished. For children who are moderately to severely underweight, the risk of death is five to eight times higher” (2005: 18). Food is needed for human dignity and human development. Malnutrition diminishes the child’s intellectual ability by hampering his/her cognitive functions (Fishman et al. 2004), often resulting in poor school performance and attendance, and increasing levels of aggression, hyperactivity, anxiety, or extreme passivity (Behrman et al. 2004). Severe malnutrition is associated with increased physical deformities, skeletal growth retardation, and blindness (UN General Assembly 2001). A hungry child will have less energy to play, explore, and learn, thus leading to an “impaired acquisition of communication, reasoning, and problem-solving skills” (DeRose et al. 1998: 10). Furthermore, hunger results in restricted behavior whereby food-seeking activities become the sole focus of life. Because of the young child’s rapid growth and change, deprivations of food and nutrition will have irreversible effects on the child’s body, mental capacities, and life.

Moreover, child chronic hunger has a class dimension too, it traps the poor into poverty. According to Jere Behrman et al. (2004), poor nutrition decreases educational opportunities and physical productivity, thereby reducing the child’s future potential earning power. Malnutrition reduces the child’s future work or labor capability too (Aguayo et al. 2003). For the landless poor, labor power is perhaps their most valuable asset. The poor’s livelihood depends on their physical capacity to work and earn a wage. Even the land-owning poor must combine their physical labor with the land in order to make a living (planting and harvesting crops). Furthermore, the evils of malnutrition are passed on from generation to generation. Women who suffered chronic hunger as children tend to deliver low birth weight babies, and many of them die in the process of giving birth (Fishman et al. 2004). Low birth weight is a prime determinant of infant and child mortality. Furthermore, maternal malnutrition during pregnancy due to a lack of micronutrients can result in irreversible mental retardation and cretinism in the unborn child (Delange 2001). Thus, the child is hungry, deprived of nutrients, before it is born. This places the child in an extremely vulnerable position at the start of life.

Unquestionably, hunger increases the likelihood of child morbidity (Pelletier et al. 1993). Malnutrition lowers the body’s ability to resist infection and disease. Consequently, the burdens of malnutrition and disease reinforce each other. Malnutrition reduces the body’s ability to fight off diseases while diseases deplete the body of essential nutrients, reduce appetite, and at the same time require additional nutrients, which unfortunately are not available.

Under a goal-based theory of rights, a child has a right to food only for utilitarian reasons: well-nourished children learn better, require fewer health services, and become more productive adults, which in turn, maximizes happiness and wealth. If one is persuaded by instrumental arguments, malnutrition leaves children more susceptible to disease and injury, thus placing additional pressure on a country’s health care services. Nutrition, and its health benefits, is a good in itself, but it also raises economic productivity and development. Scholars have noted that “assuring better nutrition can both reduce the economic drain on poor societies and help them become wealthier by increasing individuals’ productivity” (Behrman et al. 2004: 1). Behrman (1993) found that better nutrition has a positive direct influence on economic productivity among poorer workers (by increasing their strength and energy) and indirect benefits on productivity through an increase in cognitive achievement in school. Consequently, well-fed children grow up to be more healthy and productive workers, thereby reducing the costs of public health services while also increasing economic output. Increased national income will lead to improved child welfare by means of better sanitation, increased health care coverage and improved food quality, which in turn, will result in the body’s ability to better ingest, absorb, and utilize nutrients (Schiff and Valdes 1990).

Politically, the goal-based approach suggests, decreased hunger lowers conflict and dissatisfaction, thereby reducing political violence, criminality, armed conflict, and terrorism (Pinstrup-Andersen 2006). Hunger can cause an increase in the theft of food or commodities that can be sold for food. A well nourished child has greater life and employment opportunities, thus reducing the need to turn to criminal activities. Consequently, the child will be more productive and less of a drain on the court and prison systems. Therefore, feeding children benefits the state and the larger society. According to this perspective, saving children is a prerequisite for other social goals such as reducing health care costs, lowering petty crime, or increasing economic development. However, it is important to recognize that a child is more than a tool to enhance economic development or political stability. The child is an individual who, by virtue of being a human being, possesses fundamental rights but also, as a child, requires special protection.

Once again, hunger is the result of a combination of characteristics: the lack of food availability, a population’s or individual’s inability to access food, and poor food utilization (Staatz 2000). Food availability refers to the supply of food through adequate production (commercial and home produced), food aid, or importation of food. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights determined that

the “availability of food” refers either to the possibility of feeding oneself directly from productive land or other natural resources, or to the existence of a well functioning distribution, processing and market system that moves food from the site of production to where it is needed in accordance with demand.

(OHCHR 2002: para. 93)

However, an adequate supply of food is not necessarily an assurance against hunger. Hunger, also understood as food poverty, may coincide with bad harvests or famines, but it may also be the result of unemployment or rising food prices so that people can no longer afford adequate levels of food. Hunger is often the result of people being too poor or too powerless to obtain adequate levels of food.

Food access is the ability of people to obtain food. As Amartya Sen argues, “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there not being enough to eat” (1981: 1).³ Hunger is more often the result of lack of access to food rather than a lack of food availability. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights further clarifies that access to food involves both economic and physical accessibility. The OHCHR states:

“Economic accessibility” implies that personal or household costs associated with the acquisition of food for an adequate diet should be at such a level that the satisfaction of other basic needs is not compromised. “Physical accessibility” implies that adequate food must be accessible to everyone, including the vulnerable such as women, children, the elderly, the sick. …

(2002: para. 94)

Food access often reflects an individual’s

socially recognized claim on the available supply of food. Such a claim derives from owning the resources that produced the food, having income to purchase the food through the market, or having rights to some sort of grant to food via private or public safety nets.

(Staatz 2000: 2)

Intra-household distribution of food is based on a perceived hierarchical claim to the family’s food. It is often assumed that those individuals who labor, providing the family with an income, deserve more of the food. In many cases, this assumption privileges the food intake of head-of-household males to the detri-ment of women and children. Given the cultural and traditional assumptions determining the intra-household distribution of resources, specifically food, a child’s family may be part of the child hunger problem. Therefore, Gordon et al. warn “children are sometimes in poverty when their parents are not” because they do not have sufficient claim on the family’s resources (2003: 3). Nicholas Kristof (2003), reporting on the continuing hunger in Ethiopia, describes family eating habits that disadvantage the younger child. Adult males, within the family, are believed to be entitled to food because of their greater contribution to the family’s well-being. The father, according to Kristof, eats first and what is left is then eaten from a common pot by the mother and the children. If the family is large and the leftovers meager, the smaller children, unable to compete with older siblings, are left with little or no food.

Income plays a very large role in the ability to secure adequate access to food, although certain segments of the population depend more on entitlements (for example, children and the elderly). The lack of income to purchase food is a strong determinant of hunger. However, a greater family income is no guarantee of reduced child hunger. Eileen Kennedy and Howarth Bouis (1993) report that when a household’s income increases, the family often chooses higher priced foods (like meats or processed foods) over quantity or nutrition quality. Even in situations where the household has adequate access to food, not all family members will have a sufficient claim to the food (Alderman 1992). Diskin explains that “changes in household-level consumption do not necessarily parallel changes for each individual household member, as intrahousehold distribution is also important” (1994: 16). Age and gender appear to be key determinants of food consumption. Kennedy and Bouis’ study (1993) confirms that women and children have less access to food than other family members. It shows that, even when household income doubled, malnourished pre-schoolers (whose diets were 20–30 percent lower than recommended) only benefited by an increase in food consumption of 4–7 percent. This outcome may be due to a lack of understanding of the child’s nutritional needs. In families with adequate levels of food and the ability to distribute the food equitably among all members, there still appears to be a failure to recognize the child’s special needs. Laurie DeRose et al. (1998) believe that because of the misunderstood nutritional needs of the growing child, the children within the family group can experience inadequate levels of food. Young growing children have, relative to their body size, higher nutrient requirements than other family members. Because of their small stomach capacity, young children will need to eat more often and more nutrient-dense foods to satisfy their nutritional needs. Food must be made available to children several times a day.

Finally, food utilization is another key element of hunger and malnutrition. Food has to be prepared in such a way as to preserve its nutritional value and to allow the human body to absorb these nutrients. Several food products, such as legumes, grains, potatoes, and rice, require cooking before their nutritional value can be accessed. Young children rarely have the knowledge to modify food’s chemical make-up to assist the body’s ability to absorb and utilize the ingested nutrients. In addition, the body has to be healthy enough to process the food. Hoddinott reports that “utilization requires not only an adequate diet, but also a healthy physical environment (so as to avoid disease) and an understanding of proper health care, food preparation and storage process” (1999: 2).

Children suffer a disadvantage in all the elements thought to create food security and hunger. Children lack ownership of agricultural production and have no control over the level of food availability. Having adequate levels of food available is of little merit unless children have access to food. Their claim to food based on food production is limited; based on income to purchase food is low; and based on safety nets is often the result of their family’s position and protection. Although children lack the ability to control or alleviate their hunger, a child’s claim to food, to be free from hunger, is founded on his/her dependence, blamelessness, and powerlessness. Under normal circumstances, individuals are believed to be responsible for themselves and for providing for their own needs. However, this assumption does not hold for children. LaFollette and May believe the following:

Our initial sense of responsibility to the starving and malnourished children of the world is intricately tied to their being paradigmatically vulnerable and innocent. They are paradigmatically vulnerable because they do not have the wherewithal to care for themselves; they must rely on others to care for them. … Children are paradigmatically innocent since they are neither causally nor morally responsible for their plight. … If anyone were ever an innocent victim, the children who suffer and die from hunger are.

(1995: 71)

Young children and infants are entirely dependent on others and suffer the greatest and longest-lasting effects of food deprivation. Children have a right to food by virtue of the fact that they are children. A child’s right to food, to be free from hunger, can be justified not only on moral grounds, but also on the basis of the human rights theory of a state’s legal obligations.⁴ A moral right entails an obligation on the duty-bearer who should do the right thing but is not legally bound to d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Child hunger and the rights-based approach
• 2 A note on methods
• 3 A state’s obligation toward the child’s right to food
• 4 The international community’s obligations under the human right to food
• 5 The duties of intergovernmental organizations to the child’s right to be free from hunger
• 6 Transnational obligations of multinational corporations
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index