The Right to Food

In 2015 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (UN FAO) reported that hunger remains an everyday challenge for almost 795 million people worldwide. The global crisis of food security is generally problematized as scientific in nature and in need of scientific or technological solutions. This book argues that the reforms necessary for future food security may be found not just in science but also in law.

The book premises that food insecurity derives from a key feature of international law; corporate impunity for human rights violations and most specifically corporate impunity for violations of the right to food. It analyses and critiques the inconsistent application of the legal concepts that distinguish corporations from states, principally ‘citizenship’, ‘nationality’ and ‘sovereignty’. It argues that the application of these concepts to corporations serves to create an artificial accountability vacuum that deflects responsibility away from corporations and also from states who do not regulate them appropriately. The book delivers a systematic critique of the state-corporation dichotomy at the heart of international law and presents the idea of transformation or ‘revolution’ in international law through the right to food.