Guaranteeing the human right to food
Recommendation 2286
(2024)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly
debate on 3 October 2024 (31st sitting) (see Doc. 16041, report
of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development,
rapporteur: Mr Simon Moutquin). Text
adopted by the Assembly on 3 October 2024 (31st sitting).
1. The Parliamentary Assembly refers
to its
Resolution 2577
(2024) “Guaranteeing the human right to food”. It notes
that the Council of Europe was active in the past in promoting a
human rights approach to healthy food in co-operation with other
international organisations such as the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the European Union (then the European Economic Community).
2. Despite past activities such as the Partial Agreement in the
Social and Public Health Field and work on consumer health and food
quality, the Council of Europe is today less present in this area,
in which the European Union now takes the lead in the development
of food law, with the focus on food safety and consumer protection.
3. The Assembly considers that in addition to legislation on
food safety and consumer protection, there is scope for adopting
a more comprehensive approach that reflects the full complexity
of the issues associated with access to food as a fundamental right.
4. The Assembly is convinced that only a holistic human rights-based
approach, centred on the right to food, can ensure the transition
to sustainable and inclusive food systems.
5. The Assembly highlights in this respect that the right to
food is recognised in international law as an autonomous human right,
interdependent and indivisible with other human rights (in particular
the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to a healthy
environment, the right to water, the right to health, the rights of
farmers and the rights of workers in food systems).
6. The human rights framework, which has thus developed in international
law, places the requirements of food availability, accessibility,
sustainability and adequacy at the heart of the approach. It is
based on the principles of participation, accountability, non-discrimination,
transparency, human dignity, the rule of law and solidarity. It
also pays particular attention to inequalities at all stages of
the food chain and makes it possible to define the shared rights,
duties and responsibilities of States, the food industry and, potentially,
individuals.
7. The Assembly believes that this approach, fully in line with
the core values of the Council of Europe, is an essential lever
which the Council of Europe, together with other international organisations,
should (re)activate as a basis to work for the right to food for
all.
8. In this context, the Assembly recommends that the Committee
of Ministers:
8.1 reclaim the subject
of the right to food as an autonomous right that is interdependent
with the right to a healthy environment, for example by including
it in the building blocks of the new Council of Europe strategy
for the environment, which was announced in 2024 on the basis of
Appendix V of the Final Declaration of the 4th Summit of Heads of
State and Government of the Council of Europe (Reykjavik, 16-17
May 2023);
8.2 re-establish institutional synergies with the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World
Health Organization in order to identify areas of complementarity;
8.3 invite the Steering Committee for Human Rights to consider
the possibility of supplementing the Organisation’s normative framework
to guarantee the right to food.
