Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics and Human Rights



Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics and Human Rights

Task Force on Capacity Development for Human Rights in Nutrition

Points for consideration and discussion

Wenche Barth Eide

A continuing WGNEHR concern

• In the experience of this WG, capacity to work effectively with human rights perspectives and approaches to food and nutrition in development is currently VERY LOW within the international food and nutrition development community (shared with most other “technical” development consituencies with background in the natural, medical agricultural or social sciences);

• The need to build or strengthen such capacity has been continuously repeated in numerous relevant meetings, documents and recommendations in recent years, especially since the World Food Summit: five years later in 2002 and as further called for following the Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food in 2004;

• Heightened capacity is a precondition for effective outcomes of all other activities to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the right to adequate food and nutritional health - and thus also those of the WGNEHR;

• Capacity on a global scale still limited to a fairy small group of individuals within multilateral and bilateral agencies, national governments, NGO/CSOs and academia;

• Capacity development (or strengthening) will therefore have to be a standing priority on the WGNEHR agenda;

• Two recent meetings of the WGNEHR focused specifically on capacity development:

o During the 32nd SCN Annual meeting in Brasilia, 2005, reporting on experiences from or planned initiatives towards capacity development, e.g. in Norway and South Africa and as envisaged by FAO;

o During the 33rd Annual meeting in Geneva, 2006, holding a joint session with the SCN WG on Capacity Development in Nutrition (more such meetings and interaction should be considered).

What and how to focus?

• “Capacity” is needed both of rights-holders (people/groups) and duty-bearers (responsible actors) such as legislators, policy-makers, planners, project designers and monitoring units etc., at central and community level, as wells as analysts/researchers and educators;

• There is a particularly urgent need for many more scholars and trainers (of trainers) sufficiently educated to understand and apply concepts, principles, and frameworks of international and national human rights law, and able to translating these into right-based policies and programmes relevant to the chosen “technical” topics, policy environments, and levels of action implied in specific situations (at central or local level)

• Where then to start? Theoretically “everywhere at the same time!”

• But: in practice there is a need for focus, so also for the WGNEHR.

Suggestions

The following mutually reinforcing activities are proposed for discussion of focus for the WGNEHR Task Force on Capacity Development in the short- and medium term perspective:

1. Take advantage of upcoming national, regional and international meetings on food and nutrition to suggest and help infuse human rights principles and information about country-based activities in professional circles. Examples of such opportunties to be listed by WG members?

2. Actively mobilise interest among people at higher learning institutions in establishing cross-disciplinary course modules linking food/nutrition and human rights (in part in collaboration with SCN WG on Capacity Development for Nutrition and its regional Taskforces). What are the opportunities and constraints implied? [1]

3. Find ways to disseminate developments relevant to the promotion of rights-based approaches to food and nutritional health within international organisations (so far especially FAO and Unicef). Should the WGNEHR make use of the SCN website opportunity to spread ideas from particular capacity development initiatives (such as those of the FAO Right to Food Unit; the UN Action 2 Programme[2], etc.) for system-wide distribution? Are there other modalities for this?

4. Stimulate other SCN members (multilateral and bilateral agencies; NGOs/CSOs) to seriously take up human rights/the right to food and nutritional health in their respective portfolios. How? (For example, what prospects for infuencing the ECHUI initiative more explicitly in a rights-based direction?)

5. Other activities for this Task Force? Nature of “membership” – criteria for being an active member of the NEHR TF on CD?

Some specific initiatives since the 33th SCN Session (WGNEHR members to provide others?)

• Introducing the idea of a human rights-based approach to nutrition and dietetics at the opening plenary as well as through a special seminar at the South African national Nutrition Congress 2006 held in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, last September.

• Preparation of a special symposium.during the First FANUS meeting in Morocco in May 2007, see programme attached. (Note: symposium subject to funding the participation of the all-African set of speakers).

• Planning a “multilateral” master programme module under the new NORAD-funded NOMA programme (working title: “Food and Nutritional Health Security, Human Rights and Governance”, though a collaboration between three academic nutrition departments in South Africa and similar in at least one other African country, and institutions in Norway (i.e. Department of Nutrition together with the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo, and Akershus University College).

• WGNEHR members to share other activities/initiatives for capacity development?

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[1] For examples of higher learning initiatives linking food/nutrition and human rights, see two chapters in forthcoming Volume II of Food and Human Rights in Development: Evolving issues and emerging applications (eds. Eide, W.B. & Kracht, U., Intersentia, 2007), esp. Ch. 19 by Eide, W.B. on “Enhancing cross-disciplinary skills to analyse and promote food and nutrition as human rights“, and Ch.20 by Maunder. E. and Khoza, S. on “A case for national training in nutrition and human rights in South Africa”.

[2] Ch.18 by Jonsson, U. in the same book, on “UN System capacity development for human rights through the ‘Action 2’ programme”.

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