Protection of the Human Right to Food in Peacetime and During Armed Conflicts

Abstract

The research of human right to food protection or ensuring food security at different levels, still remains insufficiently developed due to the multi-vector and complexity of the problem, as well as differences in its characteristics for different regions of the world. Individual food security is much broader than the concept of “access to food”, which is most often found in international legal acts. This right forms the obligation of states to create conditions under which a person will be able to provide himself with food on his own, and provision by the state will be carried out only under appropriate specific circumstances. Today, the problem of realizing the right to food lies mostly in the plane of specificity of the category of target groups. The European, American and African Conventions do not contain specific provisions on the protection of the right to food for all without specific categories of persons, which technically makes it impossible to protect this right in the event of its violation in judicial institutions. The means of protection of this right at the national level may be exhausted, which opens up the possibility of applying international judicial and non-judicial mechanisms. The mechanisms for implementing judicial protection are the consideration of a court case, and the extrajudicial – complaints and reporting procedures. The right to food is one of the basic human rights that must be additionally protected during armed conflicts. The Geneva Conventions contain a sufficient number of norms that regulate the human right to food, however, their implementation is usually complicated by the nature of the military operations themselves.