The Right to Food and Negative Duties: The urgency of an alternative approach toward hunger amidst an overbearing institutional order.

Abstract

Hunger currently plagues over one billion people around the world, leaving mainly women, children and rural communities in post-colonial developing countries unable to obtain their most basic need for nutrition. The fundamental human right to food is found to be a complex human right involving a combination of both positive and negative duties by states and international institutions in order for its guarantee. Hunger is not only remediable but is highly preventable. Main causal factors of hunger are outlined, with a focus on Thomas Pogge’s claim that coercive international institutions are largely responsible for world poverty. In this way, global institutions are responsible not to cause harm in their economic policies and unfair trade rules in order for individuals to obtain economic access to food and thus remedy their hunger.