Legal toolkit: Covid19 & the right to food

The impact of COVID-19 on people’s human right to food and nutrition (RTFN) has fueled different types of legal actions around the world. FIAN international shares the following non-exhaustive list of relevant international legal sources with the purpose of contributing to such actions as well as other related political and legal strategies around the right to food. For an extensive monitoring assessment, see FIAN International’s first preliminary and second monitoring report on the impact of COVID-19 on people’s human right to food and nutrition. The reports are constantly being updated. They include specific examples of violations to the right to food and nutrition and relevant legal actions . 

The document is structured according to a number of different situations identified by FIAN International and allies. In particular, those that arise from measures taken by states in their efforts to contain and stop the spread of the virus. Under each situation we have included: 1. the name of the relevant international legal instrument; 2. the number or paragraph of the applicable article; and 3. a short indication of soft or hard legal character. Even though soft law is not considered to be binding in international human rights law, soft law generally rests on customary international law and international treaties. Soft law has been therefore incorporated as a source able to provide with interpretative guidance to binding law and effectively impact the decisions of policy makers and judicial decisions.
 

Please download the report here

This report was published in July 2020