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Addressing the UN-hosted Committee on World Food Security in Rome, the High Commissioner said that although the right to food has been enshrined in treaties and law, “for many people, these foods have not yet made it to their dinner plates”.
Global food supplies now exceed 3,000 calories per person per day – the highest figure in history – but hunger reduction has not kept pace.
“Too much of this wealth is swallowed up by injustice and the denial of human rights,” said Mr. Türk.
Waste, inequality, and war
Every day, each household throws away more than a billion pieces of food, he said.
Just one percent of the world’s farms operate more than 70 percent of global agricultural landwhile women farmers and Indigenous Peoples often lack government support and access to land.
The conflict has also caused acute hunger in 12 of the 13 current famine hotspots, the High Commissioner said, with restrictions on humanitarian aid and attacks on aid workers “cutting off the last lifelines”.
He called for a human rights economy built on social protection, fair taxation and agricultural policies that reduce poverty, as well as fair access to land, water and seeds, as well as meaningful climate action.
“We must do our best to ensure that the rules of war are enforced and that starvation is never used as a method of warfare,” he said.
Starve ‘with impunity’
Speaking to the Committee for the first time as an independent expert on right food, UN Special Rapporteur Sofía Monsalve Suárez said the problem that worried him the most was the rapid increase in hunger and the use of hunger as a wa weaponR.
Although chronic hunger decreased by 2025, acute hunger has continued to increase since 2016, he said.
Today, 1.4 million people in six countries face disaster conditions – nine times more than in 2016 – and 266 million people face acute hunger every day, including in countries Sudan, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemenas well as in Gaza.
“The return of hunger and the deliberate use of hunger as a weapon of war is a dangerous thing unprecedented moral challenges for our generation. “These crimes continue with impunity,” he said.
Ms. Suárez called for a stronger framework for accountability and prevention, as well as better coordination between the two Security CouncilCommittees, human rights systems and food safety monitors to improve early warning.
