The right to food

Although man may not live by bread alone, he still needs food to survive. Food is a human birthright so essential to life that without it life is not possible.

Growing constitutional recognition

Ecuador, which straddles the equator and from which it takes its name, is one of only 15 countries in the world that explicitly recognizes the right to food in their constitution. The Constitution of Ecuador which was approved in a national referendum on September 28, 2008, contains several provisions on food, an inclusion that was promoted by the Food Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Article 13 of the Ecuadoran Constitution stipulates the right to food as the right to have unrestricted and permanent access to sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, for a healthy and dignified life. In short, it expressly recognizes and guarantees the right to food sovereignty. These provisions are in line with the latest developments in international human rights law, in particular, with the United Nations’ Right to Food Guidelines.

In Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s fourth largest city, the city administration has declared healthy food a right of citizenship. “If someone can’t afford to buy food, they’re still a citizen and we’re still responsible for them,” a city official of Belo proclaimed. This beautiful concept, in fact, helped her lift her Workers’ Party to victory in the city’s municipal elections. Belo Horizonte’s innovations range from twenty-five fair-price produce stands supplied by local farmers to open-air restaurants serving 12,000 subsidized meals daily to city-sponsored radio broadcasts leading shoppers to the lowest-priced essentials.

The UN General Assembly Resolution

Last November 24, 2008, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution on the right to food by a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against. Guess who voted against the resolution?

In approving the resolution, the UN General Assembly reaffirmed that hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human dignity, requiring the adoption of urgent measures at the national, regional and international levels, for its elimination.

According to FAO, more than 6 million children die every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, while the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide at a time when the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s population.

Why then would the United States vote against the UN resolution on the right to food? Did the Bush administration (the dissenting vote happened under the watch of President George W. Bush) consider it tolerable that 6 million children die every day from lack of food? These are children who could easily be fed if the United States were not wasting its billions of dollars on its military arsenal so it could wage unjust wars and deter other nations, such as Iran and North Korea, from building nuclear weapons for themselves.

How much better an economic stimulus, both for America and the world would it be to mobilize American might for good instead of destruction?

The meaning of the right to food

The right to food implies that governments must not take actions that result in increasing levels of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. It also means that governments must protect people from the actions of others that might violate their right to food. The right to food is not about charity, but about ensuring that all people have the capacity to feed themselves in dignity.

To have access to food is a human right, and this is a binding obligation under international law, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Under international law, the right to food is defined as “the right of every man, woman and child alone and in community with others to have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement in ways consistent with human dignity.”

But the shocking irony is that global hunger continues to grow year after year. Many of the women, men and children suffering from chronic undernourishment suffer from what the FAO calls “extreme hunger”. This means that their daily intake of calories is well below the minimum necessary for survival. Malnourishment also heightens vulnerability to other illnesses and almost always has serious physical and mental consequences.

The United States against the world

What is the basis for the U.S. resistance to a right to food?

We can trace the root of the U.S. opposition to the internal contradictions in the United Nations system. On one hand, UN agencies emphasize social justice and human rights. On the other hand, the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), which the U.S. government and the World Trade Organization that the U.S. dominates, oppose in their practice the right to food, emphasizing liberalization, deregulation and the compression of state budgets – which in many cases produce greater inequalities.

Until now, the United States has not ratified the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Although President Carter signed the UN document, it has been rotting in the U.S. Senate which continues to refuse to ratify it. The United States takes the position that the right to food cannot be considered a human right which an individual can claim against the state, or where it generates individual entitlements and related state obligations that may be enforceable in national and international courts.

According to the Bush Administration, the issue of adequate food can only be viewed in the context of the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, the United States believes that the attainment of the right to an adequate standard of living is a goal or aspiration to be realized progressively that does not create any international obligation or any domestic legal entitlement. The United States understands the right of access to food to mean the opportunity to secure food and not a guaranteed entitlement.

Making the “right to eat” an essential framework for fighting hunger scares the United States even more because it carries the presumption of an eventual mechanism for enforcement. Brazil, for example, has already started investigating what is called by its National Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Food, Water and Rural Land as “violations of the right to food.”

Other countries like India and South Africa are more active in the protection of social rights, such that when there is a violation of the human right to food, the courts assume a legitimate role in protecting that right. Recently, Nepal’s Supreme Court cited the right to food when it ordered help for needy rural areas. In other words, governments become obligated to do something about hunger by granting remedies to victims of violations of the right to food, which is the only way to hold governments accountable for being passive in the face of threats to the right to food or massive violations of the right to food.

The world has spoken

United Nations agencies along with, trade unions, environmentalists, farmers, fishermen, and nongovernmental (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) have argued that there will be no genuine progress in eliminating world hunger without a reversal of current polices and trends that emphasize trade liberalization – the greatest force undermining livelihoods around the world. They maintain that such policies have diluted the human right to food, enhanced neoliberal structural adjustment in the guise of HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) programs, emphasized biotechnology and genetic engineering, and failed to support strengthening of production by the poor themselves for local markets.

Many have criticized that the U.S. policy of promoting “free trade” and neoliberal reform through the IMF/World Bank has resulted in literally promoting starvation, and thus is responsible for the world food crisis. In manipulating food around the world, the IMF creates opportunities for transnational corporations to rake in huge profits. Haiti, for example, received tons of highly-subsidized cheap U.S. rice, but only in exchange for loans from the IMF. Unable to compete with the low prices, Haitian rice farmers went out of business and locally grown food shrank to a fraction of what it used to be.

The United States stands alone in opposing the resolution on the right to food as the United Nations continues to assert that the issue of hunger requires stronger grounding in the ethical and social justice implications that a rights-based approach provides.

Ban Kim-Moon, the UN Secretary-General has stressed the need to address other issues such as the exclusion and discrimination of the most vulnerable, the increasing uncontrolled power of transnational corporations over the food system, desertification, armed conflict and agrofuels.

“The sudden, ill-conceived rush to convert food, such as maize, wheat, sugar and palm oil into fuels is a recipe for disaster,” the Secretary-General warned. “In this rush, there are serious risks of creating competition between food and fuel that will leave the poor and hungry in developing countries at the mercy of rapidly rising prices for food, land and water.”

As the rest of the world asks for a slice of good old American bread to feed the hungry, the Bush government balked. It seems that American policy-makers don’t have a problem if people starve, but then again, they have never been hungry a day in their life.

With a new kind of change in Washington D.C. right now, let’s hope that the Obama administration will be different and accept what the right to food means so that the poor and the hungry can be empowered to claim this human right.

Labour migration – the great debate

Listening to arguments for and against labour migration can be very confusing, leaving you torn between two extremes, i.e., (a) to support the decisions made by people to migrate and work overseas, or (b) to condemn your government’s failure to provide a sustainable economy where jobs are for the picking. Forget the possibility of a compromise in the meantime, this is what one gets from the current debate. Either you’re for or against it.

Let’s examine this great divide in the context of Canada’s current Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).

In a speech before a business group last November 2008, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo claimed that more jobs are waiting for Filipino migrant workers. No wonder that Arroyo calls them the Philippines “greatest export.” Among others, she stated that there will be a demand for 30,000 overseas foreign workers in Canada. Arroyo must be talking about the demand for live-in caregivers, mostly nannies who take care of pre-school children of affluent families in Canada.

A statement like this coming from the Philippine president is what drives those against labour migration even more cynical of Arroyo’s administration, accusing her of selling Filipinos overseas to save the economy at home. Forced migration of people, according to these naysayers, is not a sign of development, but rather a manifestation of the government’s inability to provide proper jobs and decent living for their people. And it is forcing people to be modern-day slaves.

Siklab-BC, a national advocacy group for overseas Filipino workers in Canada, wants to have the federal LCP scrapped. Its chairperson argues that the program is a trap for many women workers. Because of the “exploitative and restrictive policies of the program,” says Siklab, “most workers end up without status in Canada and are deported.”

Canada’s LCP is unique from temporary worker programs in other countries. It offers caregivers the opportunity to apply for permanent resident status after completing two years of work in the three years after arriving in Canada. But because of the requirement that caregivers live in with their employers, this has been criticized as unrealistic and unreasonable since the employer’s economic circumstances may change, or the parties may not get along, or there could be abuses or violations of the employment contract. When any of these circumstances happens, it becomes difficult for caregivers to look for another job and start the process again. In many instances, caregivers lose their temporary work status and are ordered to be deported.

Others find this requirement to perform full-time live-in domestic work as a form of “indentured servitude.”

Take the case of Maria who was hired as a live-in caregiver for an elderly person who needed around the clock supervision. She worked 22 out of 24 hours daily preparing meals, attending to housework duties and blood sugar-level testing, leaving her only a two-hour break to take care of her own personal needs. She slept in her employer’s bedroom because the latter wanted to be able to ask for Maria’s assistance any time during the night, although the LCP requires that the live-in caregiver have her own room with a lock on the door. Countless women like Maria but who cared for little children were also asked to sleep in the room of the children so that their parents would not be disturbed in the middle of the night to soothe a crying baby or take the child to the bathroom. Worse, in Maria’s case and the others, they were not paid overtime for the hours they rendered beyond 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week.

Maria’s experience is not unique but highlights the exploitation and oppression live-in caregivers suffer daily, according to LCP detractors. It underscores the context of the modern-day slavery of caregivers in Canada.

Critics of Canada’s LCP also cite instances where highly educated Filipino women who, in order to enter the program, have to devalue their educational and work qualifications, and as a result these women suffer from emotional strain and low-self esteem, not to mention their consequent de-skilling and deprofessionalization. Spending two years or more in jobs beneath their qualifications could cause negative consequences later when they attempt to enter and qualify for their actual professions.

The live-in requirement has also been criticized for causing strains on the families of caregivers because of lengthy separation from families, which in some cases have led to family breakdowns or emotional difficulties in reunification.

Advocates for Filipino migrants demand that instead of promoting migrant labour, the Philippine government should create jobs by developing sustainable strategies at home. They argue that what the Philippines needs is “a sound domestic economic base that will provide genuine development for the country and jobs for its people.” Instead of scavenging job opportunities abroad, they urge the government to “assure full employment through industrialization that in turn would build up a whole new set of fiscal, monetary, trade, industrial and other policies.”

But what if the government fails to do exactly what these advocates for migrant workers demand?

A Filipino caregiver in Toronto said that there’s no need to scrap Canada’s LCP. To her, the LCP is the only temporary workers’ program that allows workers to apply for permanent residency, unlike the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program where one can never become a permanent resident. She thinks scrapping the LCP will put caregivers in a similarly vulnerable situation or worse.

Responding to Siklab-BC and other disbelievers of the LCP, she said that “not everyone coming as caregivers are nurses and engineers or ‘professionals.’” By scrapping the LCP, she believes that “there is no other way for people who do not have high education or who are not professionals to come to Canada.”

She further explains: “For Filipinos like me, coming from a poor country that has no jobs, Filipinos will try to leave one way or another. There are 3,000 Filipinos leaving the country everyday to work in 198 countries around the world. Many of these countries have worse labour rights and human rights conditions but they still go. Meanwhile, now that they have a chance to come to Canada as caregivers with a chance to stay permanently, why would they want to scrap the program?”

A Montreal-based Filipino caregiver prefers that changes be made rather than scrap the LCP entirely. Simply allow caregivers to work live-out, she said, or make it optional to work live-in. This way, caregiving would be regarded as a normal job and not as susceptible to exploitation and abuse.

She is not even concerned about family breakdown. According to her, “it [family breakdown] is also happening even to those who are not going abroad. Filipinos will still find their way to go abroad even not in Canada. Even in Hongkong, Singapore, Taiwan, the Middle East, etc., many Filipinos suffer exploitation. Let us accept that that it is more difficult for us who are not rich to just stay in the Philippines. Unemployment, underemployment, low salary that cannot support your family, these are our problems. We chose to go abroad to give our family a chance to have a better life. It is not the LCP or our going abroad that destroys some of us. Broken families, drug addiction, etc. ... the root cause is poverty, difficult life, the system in our country. Our government is the problem. Actually, LCP is one way to help fellow Filipinos to go out of the country.”

Because of shortage of jobs and low wage rates in poor countries, particularly in the Philippines, Canada’s LCP has attracted many Filipino women, especially those with only two years of college education, a smattering of English and home-grown child rearing skills. Add the incentive of earning the opportunity to become a permanent resident or eventually a Canadian citizen, the LCP has become a floodgate when alternative means of acquiring permanent residency in other rich countries such as the United States has become more and more increasingly difficult for low-skilled workers.

Low-skilled and less educated workers, without family connections in Canada and no genuine basis to claim refugee status, would not qualify as skilled workers or protected persons, or under the business category. As a result, a temporary worker program like the LCP may be the most feasible way for low-skilled workers to get permanent resident status in Canada.

Canada’s response to its child-care problem by installing the LCP is more than a neutral response because, as a matter of legislation and policy, the LCP actually promotes the separation of families, exploits immigrants, and legitimizes some negative gendered norms, while having very little effect on international poverty and instability issues.

Just because many participate in the LCP does not mean it must be the best option available. Arguably, the attraction of higher wages and permanent resident status outweighs the nature and environment of the work that a caregiver finds herself in, and the separation from home and her family. But this is not enough justification. The issue is not what are the various injustices and hard choices faced by LCP participants, but whether the program is a legitimate, effective, and normatively desirable government action.

If Canada must draw guidance from its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in particular, the Section 7 right to life, liberty and security of the person, and the various human rights codes of its provinces, by perpetuating the notion that exploiting cheap foreign labour is acceptable, then the government can be faulted for eroding the moral foundation of its society.

The LCP has a very negative effect, too, of perpetuating the international image of the Filipino woman as a domestic servant. It is a niche the Philippines has made in the global economy, in part because the government itself has chosen to be the primary purveyor. The Philippine government has reaffirmed the ideal of the low-cost, low-skill, submissive female caregiver. By exporting cheap labour and relying on caregiver remittances, the Philippines can only go so far in addressing problems of poverty and instability for these funds are by and large spent on consumption rather than investment.

Achieving a balance between a caregiver program that appeals to employers and one that is fair to caregivers seems the only way to open up borders by providing incentives for Canadians and helping migrants from poor countries escape poverty. But in the end, as one writer puts it:

“Most human beings do not love to move. They normally feel attached to their native land and to the particular language, culture, and community in which they grew up and in which they feel at home. They seek to move only when life is very difficult where they are.”

And as the swelling ranks of migrant workers show, the disenchantment over a home government that does nothing to curb poverty and the futility of finding hope in their own homeland drive many more to seek that opportunity elsewhere.