U.S. Votes to Go Easy on World Hunger

What’s Next, a “No” Vote on Motherhood? This one is simply stunning. And our timing in the midst of the holiday season is impeccably ironic.

In the United Nations, on December 18th, the United States was busily building the Bush legacy in the General Assembly. The vote was on a wide range of recommendations aimed at strengthening international human rights norms. There were many items on the agenda,but the one where the U.S. covered itself in glory was Annex XIV, the Right to Food. According to the General Assembly’s news release:

By a vote of 184 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population.

There’s Something Odd Floating in the Punch Bowl. That lone “No” vote out of 185 voting is like the earth suddenly tore out a piece of itself shaped like the U.S. and tossed it into space. Or, count the next 184 people you see and then have a good look at the next one. That’s us. We stand out like a monkey in a ballet skirt.

According to the U.N. report, the U.S. excused, er, I mean, explained, its vote: “The United States felt that the a

attainment of the ‘right to adequate food’ or the ‘right to be free from hunger’ was a goal that should be realized progressively.” Yes, certainly, let’s not hurry. “The United States was the largest food donor in the world of international humanitarian food aid and it would continue to work towards providing food security to all,” at a price that is reasonable and profitable and can be used as a political hammer. “In the future, he expressed hope that the co-sponsors would work to address his delegation’s concerns, so the United States could join other countries in adopting the draft.” “Join other countries” translates from Bushspeak to English as “join the rest of the world.”

Our Excuses Runneth Over. We also tried to dishonestly portray our vote as a procedural matter. Note that the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is the legal foundation upon which the U.N. built the recent resolutions to strengthen human rights, including the right to food. According to the leading lights in our delegation, however, the ICESCR does not “explicitly” state any “obligations under the ICESCR Covenant to ‘respect, protect and fulfill’ the right to adequate food.” Sounding like Bush Justice Department Civil Rights lawyers we go on to say, “Nor does the Covenant even provide for the existence of the Committee, much less give it a mandate to issue legally binding or legally authoritative interpretations of its terms.” This is much the same “fundamentalist” reasoning the Bush administration uses to deny the existence of a constitutional “right to privacy.” There is no explicit mention of “privacy” in the Constitution, so to the right wing, no such “right” exists. The argument that the Constitution is suffused with the idea of privacy, as in the 4th Amendment, for one example, is lost on them for obvious reasons, i.e. it makes it easier to spy without remorse, etc.

However, in this case our explanation of our vote against the right to food is dishonest. In fact, the ICESCR does contain language about the right to adequate food. It’s explained in the Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights General Comment 12. Here’s an excerpt:

The human right to adequate food is recognized in several instruments under international law. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights deals more comprehensively than any other instrument with this right. Pursuant to article 11.1 of the Covenant, States parties recognize “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions”, while pursuant to article 11.2 they recognize that more immediate and urgent steps may be needed to ensure “the fundamental right to freedom from hunger and malnutrition”. The human right to adequate food is of crucial importance for the enjoyment of all rights. It applies to everyone; thus the reference in Article 11.1 to “himself and his family” does not imply any limitation upon the applicability of this right to individuals or to female-headed households.

So, our “no” vote in the U.N. indicates that we don’t so much disagree that billions of people, especially children, suffer from hunger. We agree on that one. We just don’t agree that it should carry any consequences with it, or be treated as a right that can be enforced through the legal system. After all, we helpfully explain, these are among “rights that [are], at face value, difficult to adjudicate, such as ‘an adequate standard of living’ and the ‘highest attainable standard of health.’ Violations of those rights [are] not apparent, nor [is] it easy to determine when they had been satisfactorily achieved.” This “reasoning,” of course, ignores the elephant in the room: courts exist, in large part, to determine the answers to “difficult to adjudicate” questions.

“Low Food Security” Sounds Better. But, as we’ve seen, the Bushies have different ideas, particularly about international law . . . and we don’t want to set humane standards that could come back to bite us in the ass, like our self-proclaimed “right” to use torture if we simply rename it “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In fact, the Bushies in 2006 stopped using the word “hunger” at all, replacing it with the meme “low food security.” I’m an adult, I understand euphemism and the principled interpretations of legal terms; the law is, of course, about precision in the use of words. The stance by our U.N. delegation, though couched in sterile legalities, reminds me of how the Bush administration so often misused language so as to appear neutral while pushing the worst features of its agenda. It used language to confuse in the guise of precision; to obfuscate in the cloak of clarity; to injure while appearing reasonable.

Well, this right to food episode certainly adds to the Bush legacy points, doesn’t it? It’s a microcosm of all that we will be happy to miss when they’ve left town. Bush’s father spoke of creating a “thousand points of light.” His son is – and has always been – about extinguishing them. Let’s hope that our next U.N delegation quickly reverses this inhumane and humiliating vote.

Thanks to YouTube’s Nightlife Channel for Sade’s “King of Sorrows” and to Chris07 of Creative Commons for “The Scream” pic.

UPDATE 1, 12-28-08: A commenter at iReports mentioned that the U.S. is among the more generous in helping to address world hunger and that my posting neglected that. I plead guilty. It is a well-known fact that the U.S. provides the most food aid, and that is because we are both blessed with surplus but also because we are a generous people. Here’s a USDA site called Amber Waves that provides background and also informs about the complexities involved. My apologies for ignoring the obvious, but I still remain stunned by our “no” vote and believe my basic thesis has merit.

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