The Right to Food in a Global Structure - A whole world at fault for hungry stomachs?

Abstract: The focal point of the essay is the right to food as a human right. The author argues that there is a need for a change in the human rights system concerning the right to food, since the original framework assigns full responsibility to the individual states, whereas in today's global power structures, government policies and national institutional arrangements in poor countries have very little influence on the design of the global order. At the same time, the global order has a great deal of influence on the poor countries. Comparing the human rights system with the global economic structure, it becomes evident that their inherent logics are conflicting on a number of accounts and the ideological foundations for their respective institutionalisations seem incompatible. In the current system, the hopes to alleviate hunger lies in the hands of the benevolence of the affluent actors, which fails to guarantee a certain level of consistency in the advocacy of a fulfilment of the right to food.