The Right to Food Beyond De-Mythification: Time to Shed the Inferiority Complex of Socio-Economic Rights

Abstract

This Practitioner’s Comment recognizes that continuous normative development, increased justiciability and incessant affirmation is integral to a better protection of the right to food, and of other human rights, be they economic, social and cultural rights, or indeed civil and political ones. At the same, it argues that we have reached the stage where it is time to shed the complex of normative inferiority, the obsession with establishing a bourgeois pedigree for economic, social and cultural rights, and the defensive stance when confronted with cost and intrusiveness arguments. Shaping law and policy so as to remove discrimination and target social inequalities, should be the new plea for the human rights movement.

Keywords: right to food, socio-economic rights, discrimination, inequalities, advance