WHAT WE
STAND FOR

Our Purpose

 

The National Right to Food Community of Practice is a growing network that stimulates shared learning and capacity building among state-level organizers and community-based organizations advocating for the Right to Food. Our network develops tools for political education, narrative change and advocacy rooted in a human rights framework that addresses the root causes of hunger at the intersection of racial, housing, climate and economic justice. By framing access to nutritious food as a human right, we work through collective responses that tackle the root causes of hunger and poverty long-term, deepening the conversation beyond short-term emergency food access interventions.

 

The US government has declined to ratify the International Covenant on  Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which recognizes the Right to Food, claiming that the existing social safety net in federal laws safeguards against hunger. By not codifying the Right to Food, however, the U.S. has created conditions whereby control over arable lands, seeds and inputs are increasingly consolidated, workers are exploited all along the food chain, racial justice is further entrenched and climate change is accelerated. 
 

While the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition is not a recognized legal framework that defines a set of guarantees shaping public policy in the United States (as it is in 171 other states around the world), we can use the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition framework as a tool to explore, discuss and debate how accessibility, adequacy, affordability, autonomy and sustainability play a role in achieving food security, food justice and, ultimately, food sovereignty.

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We believe the Right to Food is a call to action and a legal framework for coordinated reform in food, agriculture, health, labor, and the environment. 

We believe the Right to Food demands that we organize alongside those most impacted by hunger and poverty and amplify the lived experiences of those confronting food insecurity in the U.S., supporting them as protagonists in policy, philanthropy and other decision-making spheres.
 

We believe the Right to Food can expose and shift the dominant narrative about the true and false solutions to hunger and poverty.
 

We believe the Right to Food provides new tools and approaches that sit at the nexus of global peoples-led movements for the right to land and seeds, women’s rights, climate justice, clean air and water, housing, adequate nutrition, healthcare, thriving wages and safe working conditions.