Beyond 20 years of the Voluntary Guidelines for Right to Food: Progress and Emerging Challenges for Indigenous Peoples

Beyond 20 years of the Voluntary Guidelines for Right to Food: Progress and Emerging Challenges for Indigenous Peoples

Editor

FAO ;

Descripción

Despite major achievements to uphold the international human rights frameworks and the reinforced legal protection of Indigenous Peoples as a historically marginalized group, their rights continue to be threatened worldwide despite being enshrined in the 1989 ILO Convention 169 and the 2007 UNDRIP. While international frameworks affirm Indigenous Peoples’ rights, their implementation and protection at the national level often fall short. This growing gap between international commitments and national implementation, driven by legal obstacles, data invisibility, lack of political will, and continued violations of collective land and territorial rights undermines Indigenous Peoples’ right to food.Indigenous Peoples’ right to food cannot be ensured without holding states and corporations accountable for the violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including FPIC. It cannot be ensured without recognizing their sovereignty, identity, their special relationship with their lands, territories and natural resources, as well as the relevance of Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems as holistic systems that integrate the food triad (right to food, food security and food sovereignty).This policy brief reviews developments over the past two decades, assesses the persisting challenges for Indigenous Peoples to feed themselves with dignity, and clarifies the specific content of the right to food for Indigenous Peoples, emphasizing its collective nature and cultural dimension as key distinctive features. It calls for human rights-based policy actions to overcome persisting challenges to the realization of Indigenous Peoples’ right to adequate food. It also explores how the violations of Indigenous Peoples’ collective and individual rights, affects the realization of their right to adequate food.