MONITOR AND DOCUMENT

This approach relies on seeing the challenges we’re facing in our food system and democratic system through a right to food lens. Rights holders have an important role to play in naming and claiming their rights - in the specific ways they are experienced in their own local context and in their real lives. Monitoring and amplifying progress at local and state levels is important both for local advocacy and to leverage international human rights mechanisms for change across the United States. Documentation and recording of concrete examples can be useful tools for local advocacy efforts. People are often in stronger relationships with elected leaders and decision-makers closer to home than at the federal level, and they can use these reports to strengthen a case for local action. Submitting reports and engaging with global human rights processes helps us to build a stronger, collective voice about how the right to food is interwoven with the realization of other civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. We know that the political system has been designed to let powerful interests block what most people want - the freedom to access and enjoy the food that meets their needs, with dignity and choice, both now and in the future.  As an organization with members and partners across the United States, we are well placed to bridge and amplify instances and patterns of right to food progress and violations within and across different local, national, and international contexts.