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The Food Foundation invites you to join a seminar to consider experiences of implementing the right to adequate food and nutrition.  Along with most other countries in the world, the UK is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  Article 11 requires that states recognise the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living including adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.  Some countries of the world including Brazil and India have captured this obligation into their national legislative frameworks.  In the UK there is considerable debate as to whether enough is being done by public authorities to protect our most disadvantaged households from food insecurity.  Most recently the Food Foundation shone a light on new UN statistics which estimate that 8.4 million people could be living in households affected by food insecurity in the UK.   This event will draw on international experience to discuss to what extent a stronger legal framework around the right to food could help to protect households from food insecurity in the UK.

Welcome:  Deputy Chief of Mission, Minister Ana Maria de Souza Bierrenbach

Chair:  Anna Taylor, Executive Director Food Foundation

Speakers:

Biraj Patnaik, Principal Adviser  on the Right to Food to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court in India
Biraj will discuss how India has enshrined the right to food into law, what this means in practice for its citizens and the lessons which have been learned.

Elli Kontorravdis, Policy & Campaigns Officer, Nourish Scotland
Elli will present Nourish Scotland’s recent report to the UN Committee on Econmic, Social and Cultural Rights on the right to food as part of the UN’s 6th period review of the UK.

Professor Sergio Schneider, Professor of Sociology of Rural Development and Food Studies Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS/Brazil
Sergio will discuss how Brazil has enshrined the right to food into law, what this means in practice for its citizens and the lessons which have been learned.

Panel comments: (TBC)

Plenary discussion