The human right to nutrition security in the post-2015 development agenda

This article, written by Biraj Patnaik and Stineke Oenema and published in SCN News No. 41 in July/August 2015, analyses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using a human rights lens, in addition to the nutrition lens that is the focus of this newsletter. It analyses the extent to which the SDGs follow the human rights principles of: equality and nondiscrimination, participation and inclusion, accountability and rule of law, and the principle that all human rights are universal, indivisible, interrelated and interdependent. The SDGs are extremely important in order to mobilize the international community for the cause of nutrition security. However, the experience with the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) has shown that the drive to reach the targets cannot be at the expense of the processes employed to achieve them. The potential for the realization of the SDGs lies in the comprehensive character of the list of goals and targets. However, this long list of targets at the same time represents a challenge for the realization of the SDGs. How will countries choose from the list when national resources are limited? How can the world prevent scenarios where this list might be reduced to a shopping list from which one can choose according to ad hoc preferences? How can the world assure that the human rights principles are woven into the elements as mentioned to ensure that a real transformation towards the realization of human rights will start? The global community needs to start a true transformative process in order to de-block some of the lock-ins in our system that have been allowed to grow over the past 50 years. The SDGs could help to mobilize the world, but they need to follow the human rights principles in order to set coherent policies, programmes and actions at local, national and international levels. SDG5 on gender justice is helpful in this sense, since it is visionary and sets the important principle of gender justice on which the world rightfully agrees as it is both central for development and for the realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition.