What are the responsibilities of agribusiness enterprises in the realization of the right to food?

Taking as a departure point the framework proposed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises (A/HRC/8/5 (7 April 2008)), John Ruggie, the Rapporteur will conduct consultations on this issue and will seek to identify the implications for companies of the obligation to respect the right to adequate food. This requires to ask what it means for commercial actors to have to respect the right to adequate food ; how States should discharge their obligation to protect the right to food by regulating these actors ; and which remedies should be made available to the victims of the violation of the right to food. In order to help him investigate these issues, the Special Rapporteur shall benefit from contributions from a wide variety of actors, including a team of researchers from New York University (Law Students of Human Rights).

A two-day seminar will be organized on this issue, in order to focus respectively on the role of the producers of inputs (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides); on the role of food processors; and on the role of large retailers. The research institute European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte, Berlin) will be hosting this event in June 2009.

	Intervention to the Interactive Dialogue, Human Rights Council, 13th session, Palais des Nations, Geneva, March 2010 (in french)
	Report 'Agribusiness and the right to food' presented to the Human Rights Council, [A/HRC/13/33], March 2010
	Summary of the report 'Agribusiness and the right to food'