The right to food in Italy between present and future: Background Research

The present report originated as a reaction to the increase in poverty and food poverty in Italy caused by austerity policies, delocalization and the broader legal, economic and political environment. Every day, almost two million families and 4,7 million people face significant problems obtaining access to adequate food. Dramatically, this figure has increased by 57% since 2007 and more than one million are children. If the basic definition of the right to adequate food is that it is “realized when every man, woman and child alone or in community with others, have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement,” there was little doubt that poverty and food poverty in Italy needed to be assessed and discussed.
However, we wanted to go beyond a basic understanding of the right to food as having properly fed people and enrich our analysis by adopting a holistic conception of the right and asking specific questions concerning the Italian context. Therefore, we based our investigation on a systemic, interconnected and transformative understanding of the right to food, which derives from the
combination of the international legal framework, the CESCR General Comment No. 12,3 the 2004 FAO Voluntary Guidelines and the work realized in the last ten years by the former and current Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter and Hilal Elver. These instruments and contributors expanded the scope of the right to food, strengthening the essential role it plays in the
quest for the enjoyment of all rights.
Once the theoretical framework was set, we realized that if we wanted to talk about the right to food in Italy we had to keep in mind that Italy is the world’s ninth biggest economy, the world’s 10th largest exporter and 11th largest importer, a member of the G7, part of the Eurozone and one of the funding countries of the European Economic Community (then European Union). If it is true that ‘the most appropriate ways and means of implementing the right to adequate food will inevitably vary significantly from one State party to another’, it is thus essential to embed the analysis in both the economic and political context in which the Italian State (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) operates at the moment. This has strong local roots but is inevitably connected with the European and global context. Such approach provides the opportunity to investigate the root causes of the ongoing violations and assess whether the lack of a proper implementation may thus be more a matter of unwillingness than inability.