International Aid and Cooperation are Human Rights Obligations
Reflections on the implementation of the Right to Food in the current crisis of Development Cooperation.
All views expressed in the Welternährung are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view or policies of the editorial board or of Welthungerhilfe.
The international support system in response to hunger, food emergencies and disasters is reaching its limits and is partially collapsing. The loss of support and funding from the largest donor to date, the US development agency USAID (United States Agency for International Development), is particularly substantial in the area of combating hunger and malnutrition and the consequences cannot yet be fully assessed.
This is because the dramatic nature of the development is only gradually becoming clear: Supplies are being largely or completely discontinued in various refugee situations. Many international and, above all, domestic civil society organizations that contribute aid in difficult national contexts or guarantee that agricultural goods can be distributed are losing a quarter, half or more of their financial resources overnight. Many national organizations have to close down some parts of their activities completely. The logistics of distributing humanitarian aid are affected, from available ships to distribution infrastructure in conflict regions (trucks, etc.) which was maintained or organized by USAID. The USA wants to cut 83 percent of USAID programs and cut back a total of around 50 billion Euro. In addition, other major donors such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have also significantly reduced their funding for development cooperation.
There are no exact figures yet on the number of people affected, but it is likely that several million people will die of hunger due to the loss of food and health infrastructure. At the end of March, UNICEF reported that 23 of 30 mobile clinics in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, which is affected by hunger and climate change, had already been closed due to global cuts in emergency aid and development cooperation. Supplies to large refugee camps in the region, such as in northern Kenya for Somalia, in northern Cameroon, or in conflict or war regions such as Sudan, are being interrupted or discontinued. Alternative supply routes are often almost non-existent, and logistics cannot usually simply be taken over by a new player. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in many camps the potential supply in case of conflict in dropping to a dramatically low level of far below 2,100 kcal. Hardly anything will reach many conflict areas, especially if warring parties use food as a weapon and block distribution.
Legal proceedings are still pending to wind up USAID, and there talks about a possible new law for emergency aid and development cooperation continue in the US Congress. Nevertheless, the immediate effect on global food security is dramatic. Latest reports confirm that USAID as a whole will be closed at the end of September.
Questions of long-term nutrition at risk
However, the decimation not only affects emergency aid and emergency infrastructure, but also long-term development cooperation issues concerning agriculture and nutrition. The US is the main donor for international agricultural research centers (CGIAR), which have long since expanded their research beyond increasing agricultural yields to topics such as resource conservation or responding to climate change through adaptation regarding water, soil and crops, the search for suitable methods of cultivation in locations with unfavorable natural conditions and safeguarding agricultural biodiversity.
USAID has also promoted regional cooperation and institutions, such as, most recently, remarkable participatory processes during the development of a new African Union (AU) strategy for the transformation of agricultural and food systems. This has just been adopted at a special summit in Kampala in January 2025 and contains a decisive commitment by member states to implement this agenda more actively in their national policies. Will civil society be able to continue to participate in this process?
Multilateral players are also massively affected by the winding up of USAID, first and foremost the World Food Program (WFP). Over 100 FAO programs are experiencing cutbacks or funding suspensions. The situation is similar for other institutions at the United Nations such as the Childrens‘ Fund UNICEF. Added to this are the US withdrawals from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Framework Convention on Climate Change, etc. When so much funding for international organizations is cut, the entire UN system is affected. Budget cuts of over 20 percent are being discussed, as well as the impact of funding cuts on the UN's own functions.
Incomplete tasks of transformation
Can or will other donors fill these gaps in the short or medium term? This is unlikely to be possible in the short term, as the EU and the German Development Ministry (Minister Svenja Schulze before the change of government) have already made clear. According to the new coalition agreement, Germany, too, is planning cutbacks in development cooperation.
Critics of development cooperation in the past will now point out that the reduction in funding also creates opportunities to overcome the previous path dependence of many support models. Examples would be the promotion of “high-input” intensive agriculture, accompanied by agricultural research covered by protective patents, but also the opening of markets enforced through trade policy and the imposition of plant variety and patent regulations in most countries of the global South, with simultaneous trade policy protection for many agricultural markets in the North.
The necessary transformation of agricultural and food systems towards a sustainable economy that takes adequate account of climate change and the dramatic loss of biodiversity is still far from being recognized as politically necessary and is only being implemented hesitantly. In its assessment (Earth for All) 50 years after its first study, the Club of Rome identified this transformation as one of the five key transformation tasks that need to be achieved urgently in order to stay within planetary boundaries in the use of natural ecosystems. This urgency is similarly emphasized in the latest publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Without going into these necessities in detail, it is clear that the international community needs to make extraordinary efforts to make the agricultural and food system future-proof in the long term. It is also clear that this requires functioning international cooperation and functioning institutions, as well as an open debate on development paths and the design of transformation processes – and that there must be a “just transition” for the people affected. It may be the case that existing institutions have been slow to meet the requirements of transformation, and necessary changes are often still being blocked or delayed. However, without a functioning multilateral framework, it will not be possible to coordinate the necessary steps, consider financial compensation mechanisms and initiate implementation with the aim of reaching poorer and weaker states and above all marginalized population groups.
International assistance and cooperation are human rights obligations
As a reminder, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) – one of the two treaties that codify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – states that all parties have a human rights obligation to provide international assistance and cooperation to ensure that these rights can be implemented worldwide. This means that there is a human rights obligation to promote the transborder implementation of economic, social and cultural human rights (ESC rights) in the context of international cooperation.
This obligation for international cooperation is not an unlimited burden on available resources. The scope is not defined by treaty. In monitoring this obligation, the Committee on ESC Human Rights looks at the OECD's official development cooperation quota of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product, a measure set since 1970, and also investigates whether aid is provided without prerequisites. It is also reviews whether the aid is used in a human rights-based manner, i.e. whether it benefits particularly marginalized population groups or whether they were involved in relevant decisions during implementation. Qualitatively, individual projects or measures should not contribute to human rights violations. Trade or financial policy decisions that have a negative impact on ESC rights in other countries or can lead to over-indebtedness in recipient countries are also taken into account. Cutbacks and declines in implementing development cooperation require precise justification.
The obligations of the Covenant apply to all 173 current parties; the US is one of the few states not to have ratified; this also applies to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by all other states. Precisely because the US is currently calling almost all multilateral rules into question, it is all the more important that other states, such as the EU with additional partners (Brazil, South Africa, etc.), which are also parties to the two central human rights covenants and thus also to the social covenant, continue to respect these rules and this system.
What role should Germany play – and with what priorities?
Without cooperation and agreements, central parts of the governance structure of international cooperation are at risk. Priority should be given to support for the implementation of joint tasks, such as the monitoring of government action, for example in system for the protection of human rights, or compliance with the central Rio Conventions. It is essential to maintain research, such as international agricultural research or in the health sector for the prevention of pandemics, to scientifically support the necessary transformation in the agricultural and food system, among others. It is also important to respond appropriately to environmental challenges and ensure that measures taken serve the goal of a just transformation. Agreements, such as the results of the Kunming-Montreal Summit on the protection of biodiversity (Global Biodiversity Framework), can only be achieved multilaterally and require a joint impetus for implementation as well as a joint implementation and monitoring structure. Without a functioning multilateral structure for negotiations and for monitoring progress, global challenges cannot be addressed.
Priority must also be given to maintaining coordination, a basic structure and capacity for humanitarian emergency aid and transitional assistance. Article 11 of the Social Pact includes the right to freedom from hunger as a central goal, which was taken up in Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2 on poverty and the end of hunger.
At the same time, international cooperation must itself be based on human rights, i.e. it must ensure that possible violations of human rights standards are avoided, that the participation of all those involved, especially those directly affected, is a central standard for implementation measures, and that there are complaint and review mechanisms if unplanned or overlooked consequences become apparent. In many countries, however, the scope of indispensable (civil) society actors is shrinking. Supporting them, for instance by active engagement to protect human rights defenders, should also be a priority. When enforcing the Right to Food, it is often defenders of land and environmental rights who are currently under particular pressure, as the reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders show.
Germany is taking on a new, more important role within the donor landscape, and it will be essential to consider strategically the priorities it should set and which should be supported, such as those described here: Partner countries should be encouraged and supported in implementing their own human rights-based policies – with particular reference to the agricultural and food sector and the right to adequate food. Global commons should be protected and a just transition of the agricultural and food sector, among others, should be pursued. For the sake of fairness, it should be pointed out that the implementation of these priorities within and by Germany itself should be reviewed at the same time; in these fields, Germany still has a lot of room for improvement.
