MANILA, Philippines—The right to adequate food is a basic human right that is often overlooked or violated by the government, according to Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chair Leila de Lima
De Lima said Friday that one’s right to food was among the numerous rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
She noted how the Philippines had lagged behind in providing food rights to its citizens despite being a party to the United Nations 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.
“We want to promote an awareness that the 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, at this (time when there is a) food crisis,” she said.
De Lima, however, conceded that enforcing this basic right was a problem.
For one, the Philippines has no laws ensuring that Filipinos have access to adequate food, although there are pending bills in the House of Representatives, De Lima said.
Among the bills are the Food Security Act of 2008 authored by Rep. Eduardo Joson and the National Food Security Act of 2008 authored by Rep. 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) earlier this month in Rome, 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 or her 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 or 8.8 million Filipino families rate themselves as “food-poor” while 26 percent consider themselves in the borderline. This represents a 15 percent increase from December 2007 or an additional 2.7 million families.
Surveys also noted an increase in the poverty incidence in the Philippines and a rise in the “subsistence incidence”, or the number of persons who are unable to buy their basic food requirements.
