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Right to Food Publication, 2013

This Guidance Note is a practical tool for practitioners who want to integrate the right to food into food and nutrition security programmes. It builds a bridge between the normative dimensions of the right to food and practical work on programme design, implementation and monitoring at country level. This tool does so by briefly explaining the conceptual, legal and operational dimensions of the right to food. Then it looks at four key entry points for integrating the right to food into food and nutrition security programmes: roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, legal aspects, monitoring, and recourse and claim mechanisms. Then uses specific examples and cases to illustrate how this can be done.

The Guidance Note consolidates the right to food as both an objective and a tool for achieving food security for all. It shows that the right to food can provide an overarching framework that guides efforts to address hunger and malnutrition. At the same time, adopting an approach based on the right to adequate food in the design, implementation and monitoring of programmes increases the chances of enhancing the efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of efforts.

This publication is the result of an inter-departmental participatory process and close collaboration between the Integrated Food Security Support Service (TCSF) of the Policy and Programme Support Division and the Right to Food Team of the Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA), with numerous contributions from practitioners and experts from the field and headquarters. It was authored by Carmen Lahoz and Enrique De Loma-Ossorio from the Instituto de Estudios del Hambre (IEH) in Madrid.

It is presently available in English; the translations into French and Spanish will be published soon.