[16 May 2011] GENEVA - Olivier De Schutter contributed today to the open discussion on the "Zero Draft of the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of tenure and other Natural Resources". The Special Rapporteur on the right to food welcomes this document which has been prepared through a broad consultative process. However, the Guidelines should be further improved on a series of issues in order to become the important tool that it aims to become.
The adoption of these guidelines should be one of the most important outcomes of the 37th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in October 2011. Once adopted, they could encourage governments to put the governance of land and other natural resources at the heart of the efforts to improve food security and progressively realize the human right to adequate food.
The following comments are build on the report "Access to Land and the Right to Food", which the Special Rapporteur presented at the 65th General Assembly of the United Nations in October 2010. They are based also on the set of minimum principles and measures to address the human rights challenge of large-scale land acquisitions and leases, which was presented to the Human Rights Council in March 2010.
| ReadPDF | “Comments on the Zero Draft of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests”, 16 May 2011. |