By Beth Bell (Food Ethics Council), Clare James and Effie Papargyropoulou (Global Food and Environment Institute, University of Leeds).
“The challenge with transforming food systems is not a scarcity of food, but a resistance to reconfiguring power relations in food systems in the spirit of solidarity, care and respect for all life.” The right to food, finance and national action plans: report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, January 2025.
The right to food
References to the right to food are increasingly common within campaigns, articles and social media posts, brought about in part due to rising levels of hunger and inequality, increased levels of emergency food aid and a growing familiarity with rights-based approaches to entrenched issues.
The right to food is paradoxically regarded as both highly complex, and very simple. It is described as an undeniable moral fact, a highly contested legal concept, an activist statement with limited practical application, a part of a broader rights package that needs to be in balance, and much more besides.
So, what is the right to food? Do we have a right to food in the UK? Whose duty is it to ensure it? And how can we use it as a tool to address injustices in our food systems, and our society?
What are rights?
The term human right means different things to different people. The most widely accepted and known definition is that rights are something we have because we are human. Human rights are universal, apply to all people everywhere, and are necessary for us all to live in a dignified way. Yet beyond these fundamental ideas there is controversy and disagreement about many aspects of human rights.
In the UK, some human rights are protected in law through the operation of the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates the rights contained in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law. Yet the ECHR only contains some human rights that relate to civil and political liberties, such as the right to vote and freedom of expression. These rights are referred to as civil and political rights. In contrast, the right to food is a socio-economic right. In the UK, these rights are not as well implemented, and successive UK governments have argued that socioeconomic rights are only policy goals.
Such a position is contrary to the idea that rights enable us to live a dignified life. Surely a dignified life also requires a certain standard of living with access to food, housing and health care. Even though there is no express protection of socioeconomic rights or the right to food in UK law, the UK has agreed to and ratified international human rights treaties that include the right to food. The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights contains the most expansive statement of the right to food in international human rights law. Article 11(2) states:
‘The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:
(a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;
(b) Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.’
This right is expansive and is not just about hunger and access to food. It contains obligations and duties for states in relation to nutrition, agriculture and trade as well as cooperating with each other. The right to food is more than people being able to access a basic adequate diet.
Duty bearers: national, devolved and local government
Unlike the UK, many states around the world contain the right to food either in their constitutions or legislation. The right to food was added to the Brazilian constitution in 2010. Brazil has also implemented a law on national food security, created a National Conference on Food and Nutritional Security that facilitates citizen participation, and provides universal free school meals. Between 1990 and 2015 these measures have reduced the percentage of the population suffering from hunger from 14.8% to 1.7% and reduced childhood malnutrition rates by 73%. In the Dominican Republic, the constitution does not explicitly guarantee the right to food. Instead a law that acknowledges that adequate food is a fundamental right has been passed. Such approaches to legislating for the right to food show that even without the right to food appearing in a constitution, laws to transform food systems and improve the realisation of the right to food can be implemented.
The UK Government is responsible for the realisation of the right to food, yet the UK central Government has not considered such legislation. Devolved governments and local authorities have a role to play, but it is ultimately the UK Government that is responsible for the obligations and duties the right to food creates.
Scotland has made some positive steps in its food policy by enacting the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act. This Act requires creation of plans and setting of associated outcomes that are then scrutinised by Parliament. Scotland has also stated it is aiming to eliminate the need for food banks. As most hunger and food insecurity in the UK is due to poverty, Scotland’s choice to address this issue are limited as welfare budgets are mainly set at a central UK level.
Local authorities also make some food-related policy. They have a role in childhood diet-related health plans, and planning law can help ensure people have access to food shops that contain a variety of nutritious foods. They determine local policy in relation to free school meals and can use Household Support Funds to help prevent families from going hungry. Transport for London banned advertisement of high in fat, salt, and sugar foods across its network in 2019, and this has resulted in lower levels of energy, sugar and fat purchased in households in London. The success of this approach has led to similar measures being introduced by several London Borough Councils. South Tyneside Council has refused permission to a development of fast food outlets, indicating that such a development did not align with local policies in place to tackle diet-related ill health.
States have a fundamental obligation to ensure people in their jurisdiction are not going hungry. States also have a set of core obligations in relation to ensuring all can access an adequate diet, that they should prioritise. Implementation of these obligations requires a clear national policy and approach.
Without a joined up and coherent UK food plan, which can be guided by the content of the right to food, the right to food is unlikely to be fully realised in the UK, as stated by the by the House of Lords Food Diet and Obesity Committee in 2024:
‘The Government must as a matter of urgency adopt a new, comprehensive and integrated food strategy to address the wide-ranging consequences of the food system failures identified in this report. Implementation of such a strategy will only be successful on the basis of strong and accountable leadership at the highest level of government’
Such a plan needs to be based on the right to food, putting the rights of people and the obligations of government at the heart of the plan. A right to food framework shifts from an economic framing of food systems based on supply, demand, and distribution. It also identifies and provides the potential to challenge power in the food system to bring about positive change.
The reality: hunger, poverty and access
1 in 7 households in the UK lacked the financial means to access decent and healthy food in 2024. Households with children, mental health conditions, disability, on Universal Credit or from a non-white ethnic background are disproportionally affected by even higher levels of food insecurity. There are also stark regional disparities, with the North of England more heavily affected than the South (with the exception of London). The Broken Plate Report demonstrates how much decent food is realistically accessible by citizens of the UK. The voluntary sector has responded to fill this gap by intensifying food aid, with Trussell reporting they distributed 1.4 million emergency food parcels between April and September 2024, continuing to hit record numbers since 2019.
In the context of rising food insecurity, food hubs such as food pantries, community supported agriculture schemes, community kitchens and community cafes, have proliferated both in number and in the roles they perform. Food hubs strengthen local food systems, support local economies, enhance sustainability, and improve the health, wellbeing and agency of their communities. In doing so, food hubs contribute to regional, national and global priorities on food security, food systems resilience, health and sustainability. Although this response brings significant benefits to the communities, food hubs recognize the need to transition away from emergency food provision to more long term, sustainable, and holistic food provisioning models. This response by the third sector has been commendable and provides a lifeline to those in need, but the focus purely on food access and third sector solutions is problematic as it does not address the root causes of food insecurity.
At the foundation of this problem lies the fact that food has been framed as a commodity not as a human right essential for survival and thriving communities. Emergency food aid cannot be said to meaningfully fulfil the right to food. A real, inclusive right to food must go much deeper: the right to nourishing, culturally appropriate, accessible food, produced fairly and minimising environmental harms.
The current focus on accessing food and preventing hunger as the primary output of a right to food can lead to some troubling outcomes. Food banks and food waste redistribution are becoming normalised in society. Governments have indicated Household Support Funds can be used to fund food banks and have provided Government funding to organisations that re-distribute waste food to tackle hunger. Although these charitable activities do address hunger and improve the access to food of many in society, we should not be normalising responses that should be short-term. Long-term and fundamental changes need to be made to our food systems to reduce hunger, improve food access and make food production sustainable for this and future generations.
The future of the right to food
As with many wicked problems, poverty, hunger and food insecurity can seem too big, too intractable, too complex to tackle. Our current solutions are too often reliant on individuals, asking people to make better choices, when the challenge is that many people have a lack of options. Or on third sector responses which, although well meaning, embed the very thing we need to eliminate. However, the right to food provides an excellent basis on which to start building a fairer, more sustainable society. The right to food provides a systemic framework for action that is multi-sectoral, multi-dimensional and multi-functional. It must start from a firm legislative foundation — the enshrining of the right to food in national, regional and local government.
This article also appeared in https://medium.com/globalfoodleeds/the-right-to-food-in-the-uk-moving-from-third-sector-solutions-to-government-action-26c63dddd4ac
Photo credit: Koca Vehbi, Shutterstock