We have an advert in the UK, which has spawned a catchphrase - it does
what it says on the tin. So, as far as the following call for
participation is concerned... it's a call for participation....
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/quote/
Proposal for a Project on
*IMPLEMENTING CHILDREN'S RIGHT TO FOOD*
George Kent
Draft of June 28, 2007
*PURPOSE*
A great deal of work has been done over the past decade to advance the
understanding and implementation of the human right to adequate food,
but a great deal of work remains to be done. More than five million
children die before the age of five every year due to causes related to
malnutrition. The launching of the Ending Child Hunger and
Undernutrition Initiative (ECHUI) by United Nations agencies in 2007 is
stimulating a great deal of interest in practical methods for the
implementation of the right to food for children. The project proposed
here, on /Implementing Children's Right to Food/, is designed to create
a space for exploring that theme and stimulating new collaborations in
advancing the realization of this right.
It is proposed that a diverse group of experts in this area should be
assembled to collaborate over a period of three years in preparing a
book on the theme. There would be a two-day face-to-face meeting held
once a year, for three years, finally culminating in a book. This
extended period would provide time for collaborations to build, and for
new practices to be implemented and to be assessed at least in a
preliminary way. While the face-to-face meetings would be short, they
are expected to motivate extensive discussions between meetings through
the Internet and other means.
This is a capacity-building exercise, but it is not based on a top-down
approach. The premise here is that people who are working closely with
the most vulnerable rights holders themselves have much to share.
Through systematic sharing and joint reflection on the issues, we will
increase our capacities, individually and collectively, to address the
major problems of malnutrition in all their forms.
There would not be one fixed approach that would bind the different
participants. Different experts tend to highlight different aspects of
the right to food. This project would help to harmonize the different
approaches by facilitating teaching/learning among the participants
themselves.
Participants in the project would be expected to describe the chapters
they intend to write early in this process. Some would write
country-based accounts of what has been done in the past and what might
be done in the future. Others would take up the theme on a regional or
global basis. The initial drafts would describe the authors’ current
understanding of children’s right to food and the ways in which it can
be implemented in their own places. Future drafts will show how this
understanding evolves through the systematic interchange with others
involved in comparable situations.
We will encourage the creation of parallel projects on this theme in
various regions of the world, as independent activities that are
coordinated with this central one. These projects would find their own
resources. Several would have representatives in the central project,
writing chapters that draw not only on their nation’s efforts but also
on their regional work. Thus, the impact of this central project is
likely to be multiplied as a result of its linkage with the regional
projects. Several regional experts have already shown interest in
working together in this way.
I recently finished editing a book on /Global Obligations for the Right
to Food/, scheduled to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in late
2007. Its purpose is to show that malnutrition has been treated as
collections of unrelated national problems, despite rhetoric and
activities such as the Millennium Development Project that misleadingly
suggest that malnutrition is being addressed at the global level as a
global problem. The reality is that so far theglobal community has not
acknowledged its responsibilities for dealing with nutrition issues. The
project described here moves the effort toward a more global approach,
not through some sort of top-down imposition of particular methods of
work, but through harmonization of national-level efforts that are
already under way. This harmonization will help to strengthen the
collective voice of those who work most directly with those who need to
have their rights realized.
*ROLE IN SCN*
The United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) meets in
February or March each year. The SCN is very involved with these issues,
as illustrated by its having discussed ECHUI at length at its meeting in
Rome in February 2007. ICRF will function as a project of the SCN’s
Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics, and Human Rights, as we did with the
Principle Investigator’s previous project on Global Obligations for the
Right to Food. The ICRF project’s major conferences will be held just
prior to the SCN conferences for three years, beginning with the 2008
conference in Vietnam. This will make it easier to draw participation
from major global experts, including those with major international
agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, the World Food Programme, and the United Nations Children’s
Fund. Holding our project’s meetings at the time and place of the SCN
conferences will also strengthen the likelihood that our project will
have a significant impact on the SCN.
/unquote/
Professor George Kent
Department of Political Science
University of Hawai'i
Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822
USA
Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent
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Morgan Gallagher
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