ASIA: Enjoyment of the right to food requires a shift from short-term and discriminatory practices
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 18, 2010
ALRC-CWS-13-02-2010
Language(s): English only
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Thirteenth session, Agenda Item 3, Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
A written statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a non-governmental organisation with general consultative status
ASIA: Enjoyment of the right to food requires a shift from short-term and discriminatory practices
The
enjoyment of the right to food remains elusive for many across the
Asian region. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) will concentrate
on specific concerns with regard to the right to food in India and
Indonesia in this written submission to the Human Rights Council (HRC),
although these problems are replicated in many other countries in South
and South East Asia in particular.
On 23 December 2009, Shama,
a four-year-old boy died of malnutrition and diarrhea in the Indian
state of Madhya Pradesh. Shama belonged to the Bhil tribe, Jhabua
District, Madhya Pradesh. His father Galia cultivates four acres of
farmland, from which they harvested just four bags of maize in 2009.
The harvest, depending on depleting rainfall is not sufficient to feed
the family of nine. As a result, the family had to migrate to
neighboring districts or states, which made them more vulnerable to
food insecurity. In the last three months, 43 children including Shama
died of malnutrition in three tribal villages in Madhya Pradesh.
Madhya
Pradesh is the one of the biggest contributors to neo-natal and child
mortality in the world. The mortality rate among children under the age
of five in the state¡¦s tribal community is far higher than the state
and national average. The chance of survival of a tribal child is low,
with 71.4% tribal children being malnourished and 82.5% children being
anaemic.
India has the highest number of malnourished children
in Asia. UNICEF¡¦s 2009 report revealed that more than 80% of the cases
of child malnutrition and mortality were found in the tribal and low
caste community. The actual number may be even higher as the government
often denies that children and adults die of malnutrition and
starvation.
India's response to cases of hunger has been
inappropriate at best, and often negligent. The quantity of food
distributed by states has decreased, although the total agricultural
product concerning rice or wheat has not. India has failed to address
hunger among its tribal communities. On May 8, 2008, before the
Committee on economic, social and cultural rights, India underlined
that it had adopted a comprehensive legal framework to protect the
rights of its tribal population and that it is committed to the
fulfillment of the economic, social and cultural rights of its entire
people.
However, cases of hunger prove that this is false. Its
response and action often come after children die of starvation. Since
2009, the ALRC and its sister organization, the Asian Human Rights
Commission (AHRC, have been reporting on the situation of child
malnutrition and its causes focusing on four tribal districts ¡V
Khandwa, Rewa, Sidhi, and Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh.
Tribes
living in dry land or forest areas depend economically on agriculture
and natural resources from the forest. Soaring food prices since 2008
and drought for the past few years have been aggravating food
insecurity in tribal predominant areas. Traditionally, nutritional
needs of tribals were met easily by forest resources. Recently, in the
name of forest conservation, tribals are being evicted from their
natural habitation, resulting in gross livelihood insecurity and
malnutrition among them.
Distress migration is often the only
option left for survival, but results in increasing the burden of debt
and food uncertainty. For those who stay, lack of nutrition and an
unhygienic environment cause malnutrition and other sicknesses to the
children. In Jhabua district, only 4.5% of the rural population have
access to toilet facilities, while only 1.5% can access water from a
pipe¡V.
Nevertheless, the government statistical tools to
determine who is living Below the Poverty Line (BPL) and are thus
eligible to food assistance do not take into account the specific
agricultural structures of tribal areas. Possessing land is an
indicator of living Above the Poverty Line (APL) and therefore prevents
small landowners, such as Shama¡¦s family, from receiving food
assistance.
A new system introduced in 1992-93, called the
targeted public food distribution system, is yet to be fully
implemented in the country. For instance, 200,000 families in Madhya
Pradesh are denied BPL status. The central government has identified
only 4.2 million BPL families against the state's claim of 6.5 million
in Madhya Pradesh alone. To ensure nutrition and food security, the BPL
must be abolished and ration quota must be made universal.
In
2005, the Special Rapporteur on Right to food, following a mission to
India, acknowledged that the marginalization of tribal people hampers
their access to state institutions, including public programs ensuring
food security, which further aggravates their food insecurity.
Approximately 50% of children in the tribal areas are not registered at
childcare centers, denying them supplementary food grain. This implies
that the government does not have accurate data about the number of
tribal children suffering from malnutrition and thus cannot design
specific policies targeting them.
The system talks about
institutional treatment of the malnourished children. However, without
infrastructure, facilities and services it is unrealistic to provide
institutional healthcare to 6.1 million children. Community based
intervention for nutritional care of all children with special
attention to malnourished children is required. The Supreme Court has
recommended that such children¡¦s right to food to be addressed in the
proposed National Food Security Act.
Discrimination in access to
public health institutions worsens the problem. In its 2008 State of
Asia-Pacific Children Report, UNICEF underlined that in India, ¡§Caste
and ethnicity also play key roles in keeping primary health-care
services to some populations well below national averages¡¨.
Concretely, this implies that although parents try to have their
malnourished children treated at public health institutions, they are
either denied immediate treatment due to lack of facilities or are
discriminated against at the hospital. For example, tribal children
have to stay in beds next to the toilets and their mothers are in
general not provided with food and water. Furthermore, even at public
health institutions, they often have to pay.
In Madhya
Pradesh, 67% of the people live below the poverty line and 60% of the
children are undernourished while 73.9% of tribal women are anemic.
However, the budget for health service accounts for merely 2.4% out of
total state budget. One bed is available for every 2,425 persons in
hospitals, and more than 1300 out of 5005 doctor posts remain vacant.
Although child malnutrition has increased over the last five years, not
one Primary Health Centre has been built and 1,659 out of 4,708 medical
officer posts remain vacant at the Centers.
The food
distribution system also often fails to reach the poor. In its fortieth
session in April-May 2008, the Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights expressed concerns about ¡§reports of corruption,
inefficiency and discrimination in distribution that hamper access to
food, particularly by the disadvantaged and marginalized groups of
society¡¨ in India. For decades, corruption has prevented the
government from identifying the BPL families. While many public
servants have been identified as BPL, poor tribal communities have
often been excluded. More often than not, food programs have been
abused by corrupt officials and politicians.
The social audit
system, the only official channel through which the poor can make
demands fails to function due to corrupt public servants. Social audit
report concerning Jhabua do not mention the villagers¡¦ grievances.
They are often either intentionally excluded from the audit, or, if
they dare to speak out with the support of human rights defenders, are
physically abused or even killed by upper caste civil servants and
influential villagers. Denial of freedom of expression and
participation is rooted in a caste-controlled society and bureaucracy.
The lack of a fair legal system through which victims can seek redress
further prevents marginalized communities from enjoying the right to
food. Even the National Human Rights Commission has failed to
independently investigate right to food violations since 2009.
On
June 6, 2008, the UN Special Rapporteur declared that the enjoyment of
the right to food ¡§requires that we focus on the most vulnerable
segments of the population. It brings into the debate requirements of
accountability and participation.¡¨: In India as is the case elsewhere
in Asia, this remains a major challenge concerning the protection and
enjoyment of rights.
The government targets higher economic
growth and a second green revolution by adopting Genetically Modified
(GM) seeds or food. In Orissa, multinational corporations like POSCO
are allowed to occupy vast areas of land, depriving tribal villagers of
their rights to land and water. In 2005, the Special Rapporteur on the
right to food stated that the overrepresentation of tribal people among
those displaced because of developmental projects reflects serious
discrimination. Such communities¡¦ right to food, land and water should
be taken into account in designing developmental activities.
Indonesia
is another example of governmental passivity when confronted with
people starving to death, especially in Papua province. During the
first half of 2009, about 113 villagers died of starvation and
associated diseases in seven districts in Yahukimo. 55 villagers had
also died of starvation in Yahukimo in 2005. The government denied
these deaths but provided food and food store facilities in some areas,
while arguing that it was difficult to deliver food subsidies to remote
affected areas.
The same situation was repeated in 2009.
Because of a bad harvest, villagers living in the highlands suffered
from a lack of food. While arguing that the areas aredifficult to
reach, the government has repeatedly delayed the distribution of food
and medicine. Langda District, for example, received only 1.4 tons of
rice for distribution to 6000 villagers.
In the short term,
governments must take all necessary actions to ensure the right to food
of all persons. T ensure the enjoyment of he right to food in the long
term, States must encourage the empowerment of local communities and
help them to develop sustainable food production systems. This cannot
be done without combating discrimination and without securing the right
to land of indigenous people, notably by guaranteeing against the risk
of arbitrary expulsion from land because of industrial projects.
Currently, the governments of India and Indonesia have failed to
develop such projects and have chosen to focus on short-term
hunger-relief assistance.
The ALRC recalls that the right to
food cannot be fulfilled without general and comprehensive measures to:
fight against corruption; increase the accountability of public
institutions, notably those in charge of food distribution; and provide
effective legal remedies available to all. Consultative mechanisms
should be implemented when decisions that may affect the right to food
of certain sectors of the population have to be taken.
In this context the ALRC requests the Council to:
1.
Provide means and facilitate processes by which the Rapporteur on the
Right to Food can actively engage with States concerning reported
patterns of denial of the right to food;
2. Encourage human
rights organisations by providing more opportunities for them to
interact with states as well as entities within the UN framework in
addressing the issue of right to food and denial thereof;
3.
Find means for human rights organisations to be part of interstate,
inter-organizational dialogues with a view to have effective
participation in policy formulating discussions;
4. Encourage
states to find means through dialogue and partnerships to radically
shift from food ration subsidy programmes to food and livelihood
guarantee programmes by recognising tribal and ethnic identities;
5.
Develop guidelines for encouraging community based interventions for
nutritional care of children, specifically for the treatment of
Severely Acute Malnourished children.
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