Human Rights Responses to Land Grabbing: a right to food perspective

This article approaches the debate on ‘contemporary land grabbing’ from a human rights perspective, focusing on one right that is particularly threatened: the right to food. It sketches an analytical framework grounded in international human rights law and the contribution such a framework can bring to the land-grabbing debate. Following a brief historical background on the right to food and its articulation in international human rights law, the paper expands on this by focusing on what can be called human rights responses to land grabbing from a right to food standpoint. The analysis considers the contributions of different actors in the human rights sphere and examines the role of the UN Committee on World Food Security and its recently adopted Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests. It also investigates how the phenomenon has been addressed by the UN human rights mechanisms, drawing on relevant practice of the UN treaty bodies and the Human Rights Council, with a focus on the Special Rapporteur on the right to food and the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Cambodia. The engagement of regional human rights system with the issue of large-scale land transactions is also analysed.