MANILA, Philippines—Having adequate food is a right and not just a necessity, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said.
CHR chairman Leila de Lima Friday said that one's right to food was among the numerous basic human rights listed in the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of the United Nations overlooked or violated by the government.
She noted how the Philippines has lagged behind in instilling economic, social, and cultural rights such as the right to adequate food despite being a state party to the UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which recognizes the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family.
De Lima said that the Philippines has not yet given too much importance to the “justiciability” of a person's economic, social, and cultural right.
"The right to adequate food is an important economic social right.
“We want to promote an awareness that right to food is indeed a human right, it's not just a need," de Lima told reporters in an interview following the CHR's launch of its 60-day countdown to the 60th anniversary of the UDHR in December.
"If it is a right, it can be demanded by those who are in need of adequate food especially in this (time when there is a) food crisis," she said.
De Lima, however, conceded that the enforcement of this basic human right was a "problem."
For one, the Philippines has no laws that ensure that Filipinos have access to adequate food although there are pending bills at the House of Representatives, de Lima said.
These are the "Food Security Act of 2008" authored by Representative Eduardo Joson and the "National Food Security Act of 2008" authored by Representative Leonila Chavez.
Both Joson and Chavez, the CHR chair noted, are from Nueva Ecija, the "Rice Bowl of the Philippines.
In her speech at the Right to Food Forum organized by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held earlier this month in Rome, Italy, de Lima said that even Filipino "legal luminaries are in doubt as to whether an ordinary citizen can go to court in order to invoke his economic, social and cultural rights and demand redress for their violation."
"It is no wonder that the same ordinary citizens—who are not as educated about their human rights in general and their ESC rights most particularly—have never even attempted to go to the Commission on Human Rights complaining about the violation of their ‘right to food’," de Lima said.
At the forum, de Lima pointed out that in the June 2008 survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS), 49 percent of Filipino families or 8.8 million rate themselves as food-poor while 26 percent consider themselves in the borderline—a 15 percent increase from December 2007 or 2.7 million more families.
Surveys also noted an increase in poverty incidence in the Philippines and a rise in subsistence incidence, or the number of persons who are unable to buy their basic food requirements.
De Lima also told the forum that according to the Philippines' Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), one out of four children is underweight and four million children under 10 years old are undernourished.
"The increase in statistics must be given due attention and concrete action by government," de Lima said.
