Clarity

Canada won't support UN's 'right to food'
Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, May 15, 2008

UNITED NATIONS - Canada is one of just six countries on the United Nation's Human Rights Council that is withholding support for an emergency "right to food" meeting amid the current global food crisis.

Proponents of the May 23 special session say it will focus on the way soaring food prices are among factors that have diminished people's "right" to enough to eat.
While the initiative is Cuban-led, leading democracies such as Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland are among the 41 states of the 47-member Council that have joined the call for the session.

Joining Canada in withholding support are fellow member states Netherlands, India, Cameroon, Madagascar and Azerbaijan.
"The Conservatives are being honest to their own convictions, but they are in violation of their international obligations," said Graham Riches, a University of British Columbia social-rights specialist who has worked with the UN on the right to food.

Advocates for the right to food say it is enshrined in a number of international treaties, among them the 1966 International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, which Canada ratified under the Liberals a decade later.
But many also argue fulfilling the right requires governments to replace market-based food delivery -- which has traditionally existed in Canada -- with national programs and plans.

Mr. Riches said earlier Liberal administrations did not advance food rights on the international stage in ways he and many like-minded experts believe is necessary.
"In Canada, you're dealing with the food industry and Agriculture Canada, which is largely penetrated by the large food corporations," said Mr. Riches, "which means they'll simply wish to apply the market -based policies and not look at plans."

"In many ways, the United States is being more honest ... in that it hasn't ratified these kinds of conventions because it understands that if it does, it would require it to intervene much more markedly in the marketplace," he said.

Skeptics of the right-to-food session say they expect to see Western capitalism blamed for the food crisis, which experts say is driven in part by rising oil prices, some commodity speculation and increased demand for meat from such fast -developing countries as China and India. Many also question the timing of the session.
"What's scandalous is that they are having this session when there are two million people starving because of the natural disaster in [Burma], yet there is no special session on that," noted Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, which monitors the Council at its Geneva base.

Asked yesterday why the Council had not scheduled a session on the Burma junta's resistance to admitting humanitarian aid, a spokesman for the UN human rights high commissioner said the body already had "a very full program."

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