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We can feed everyone in Australia and the world. Why don’t we?

Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023, with 2.33 billion facing moderate or severe food insecurity.

Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023, with 2.33 billion facing moderate or severe food insecurity. Photo: Getty

October 16 is World Food Day

As a child, I remember having a strong aversion to Brussels sprouts and boiled cabbage. I would try to conceal them under my cutlery in the naïve hope that Mum wouldn’t see them.

It never worked, and my tactics generally invoked a threat from Mum that I would not get any dessert, coupled with a reminder to think about the starving children in Kampuchea.

Sadly, self-interest (I wanted dessert) rather than a concern for the children in Kampuchea (I had no idea who they were) persuaded me to force down the Brussels sprouts and cabbage.

Fifty years later, I find myself using the same parenting techniques in Australia to persuade my own kids to eat their dinner. Only now, I draw their attention to the starving children in Sudan.

Real crisis

I’m sure my technique is an example of poor parenting 101. But the lack of global attention given to the current humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where an estimated 25.6 million people are facing acute hunger, is staggering.

Globally, nearly 282 million people in 59 countries experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023, with 2.33 billion facing moderate or severe food insecurity.

Unsurprisingly, children and women make up 60 per cent of those who are chronically hungry and, shockingly, half of all child deaths are linked to malnutrition.

Even in rich developed states, more and more people are experiencing food insecurity.

Across Australia, 3.7 million households experienced food insecurity in 2023, meaning they were ‘actively going hungry, reducing food intake, skipping meals or going entire days without eating’.

Confronting statistics

These are confronting statistics that warrant far closer attention as we approach World Food Day on Wednesday.

They are also depressing given that the right to food is recognised in international and regional human rights instruments, and goal two of the Sustainable Development Goals is about creating a world free of hunger by 2030.

In theory, states have an obligation to be taking steps individually and collectively to ensure the availability, accessibility and adequacy of food for everyone.

The failure to do so is not due to a lack of resources.

Globally, there is enough food to ensure that no one should endure food insecurity, let alone acute food shortage and the prospect of starvation.

Although cost estimates vary, the World Food Program suggests it would take only $40 billion per year to end world hunger by 2030.

In the scale of things, this is a trifling amount – global military spending in 2023 alone was estimated to be $2.4 trillion.

As with achieving all social and economic rights, securing the right to food is not about a lack of resources but about how existing resources are allocated.

Right to food

So why are so many people hungry? Inequity, climate change, conflict, disasters and emergencies, and poverty all play a role.

As do our inefficient and unsustainable global food systems.

The Special Rapporteur on a Healthy Environment has highlighted ‘‘the catastrophic environmental and health consequences of industrial food systems, unhealthy diets and food waste and the associated consequences for the enjoyment of human rights, with disproportionate adverse effects on vulnerable and marginalised groups’’.

There is no shortage of guidance about the steps necessary to protect the right to food.

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has produced reports that outline measures to address the global food crisis and transform food systems in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss.

The Committee on Economic and Social Rights has issued a General Comment on the Right to Adequate Food. There are also Voluntary Guidelines to support realisation of the right to food and several related policy documents issued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Wrong priorities

Too often, the failure to follow these recommendations is the result of preserving vested interests in the status quo, prioritising other agendas and/or a lack of political will to enact the changes necessary to bring about realisation of the right to food.

You know things are challenging when a Google news search reveals 10,000 media stories about a television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague, and only five stories about a scientific paper warning of simultaneous crop losses in the world’s major growing regions as a result of climate breakdown.

But, as is always the case with human rights, there are also stories of hope.

Help at hand

In 2023, Geneva became the first Swiss Canon to anchor the right to food in its constitution. It joined a growing number of jurisdictions that provide this protection in varying forms.

Bodies like the World Food Program do extraordinary work in providing food to those in crisis.

Pro bono legal support is also helping in efforts to tackle food insecurity and promote sustainable farming practices.

And civil society continues to step in and fill the void where states fail to act – the World Food Kitchen, which is grounded in the idea of food as a universal human right, is doing extraordinary work in central Europe, Gaza and the Ukraine.

Countless groups provide ‘soup kitchens’ to feed the hungry in every part of the world, and social enterprises are increasingly using food and catering businesses to empower vulnerable and marginalised groups.

STREAT catering is one example in my home town of Melbourne; the Moroccan Soup Bar is another.

Building community

Securing the right to food is about more than just averting hunger and its health consequences.

Studies confirm what we have always known: That ‘breaking bread’ together can have a powerful impact on community-building and social relations.

On that optimistic note, I’ve decided to arrange a dinner for my university students to mark the end of semester and, for many of them, the end of their law degree.

But, unlike with my own children, I won’t chastise them if they don’t eat all their vegetables.

They, like all of us, must work out how best to address the moral challenge of world hunger.

But I might just nudge them into thinking that everyone has a right to food, and everyone has a role to play in ensuring that this right is fulfilled.

John Tobin is a professor of human rights law in the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, and co-director of studies for the human rights program in the Master of Laws and co-director of research in human rights within the Institute for International Law and the Humanities

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