Food Systems can be transformed – together
UN Reform and the Realization of the Right to Food
The UN80 reform offers a chance to enhance coordination between humanitarian, development, and human-rights bodies and advance the right to adequate food.
Dr. Rafaël Schneider Coordinator Food Security Standard - Deputy Director Policy & External Relations
The UN80 reform initiative presents a critical opportunity to strengthen the UN system’s coherence, effectiveness, and capacity to address complex global challenges, including hunger and malnutrition.
While not food security-specific, the reform agenda is highly relevant to SDG 2 – Zero Hunger and the right to adequate food, because food insecurity is driven by systemic, cross-sectoral issues such as conflict, climate shocks, inequality, weak governance and market volatility.
Andrea Sonntag Program Manager "The Right to Food in Africa", Team Policy & External Relations
A more coordinated, rights-based UN architecture can enhance system-wide coordination between humanitarian, development, and human-rights bodies, integrate the right to food across policies, increase accountability, and improve responsiveness to climate-, market-, and conflict-driven crises.
Conversely, poorly designed reforms risk diluting mandates, weakening specialist capacities, or allowing private interests to undermine a rights-based food systems governance.
Within this context, three UN institutions are central to advancing the right to food. Firstly, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the leading UN agency on food and agriculture and holds an explicit mandate to promote the right to food. FAO serves as the institutional anchor for providing normative guidance, supporting governments in drafting legislation and policies founded on human rights-based approaches.
In July 2025, the FAO conference decided to elevate the right to food to a cross-cutting theme within FAO. This commitment needs to be operationalized in FAO’s programming for the coming years and must also be reflected in the support provided to member states in implementing the right to food. The FAO Right to Food Team requires stable staffing levels and its links with both other FAO units and the organization’s local offices need to be strengthened. Regional and country offices need dedicated staff to support member states in integrating the right to food into legal and policy frameworks. This is essential to ensure SDG 2 implementation remains grounded in legal obligations rather than technical or market-driven goals.
Secondly, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) provides the only inclusive multilateral platform for food systems governance. Its reform in 2009 emphasized the progressive realization of the right to food as its core mandate and enabled the structured participation of those groups whose right to food is frequently violated, such as smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples and agricultural workers, in the decision-making processes on global food issues.
Strengthening the CFS entails upholding the right to food as a core normative principle, using this platform for coordinating policy decisions on preventing and responding to food crises, establishing effective monitoring and follow-up mechanisms for state implementation, safeguarding meaningful participation of civil society, small scale producers, vulnerable groups and Indigenous Peoples through the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM), and managing private-sector engagement to prevent conflicts of interest. Furthermore, member States and other CFS stakeholders should incorporate CFS policy recommendations into other relevant international policy processes, such as the Rio Conventions or G20 initiatives, and utilize them in these contexts.
Thirdly, the UN-Human Rights System, including the UN Human Rights Council, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Special Procedures, such as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, ensures legal accountability. The latter two require sufficient capacity to undertake field missions and investigate reports of violations of the right to food.
Treaty bodies should enhance their monitoring of issues related to food security. Lastly, cooperation between the UN human rights bodies and mechanisms, the FAO and the CFS need to be strengthened further, for instance in developing guidance and supporting states in adopting the right to food into legislation, policies and accountability mechanisms. However, it is also crucial that member states are prepared to accept recommendations and take steps towards the progressive realization of the right to food.
Aligning FAO (norm-setting and technical support), CFS (governance), and OHCHR (accountability) through UN reform presents a unique opportunity to make the right to food a real, enforceable global commitment. Reinforcing these institutions ensures that Zero Hunger is pursued as a legal, rights-based obligation, rather than a voluntary development goal, and accelerates progress toward SDG 2 by 2030.
For the UN to be meaningful to the people, particularly those affected by hunger and malnutrition, they must be involved in the reform process. The CFS could serve as a model for this.
In a nutshell, Germany and all UN member states should seize the UN80 reform as a unique opportunity to strengthen the UN system to ensure the full realization of the right to food worldwide by:
- Supporting FAO in mainstreaming the right to food throughout the organization, which also means allocating sufficient staff with a mandate to advise on its operationalization.
- Empowering CFS to uphold the right to food, ensure inclusive participation, manage private-sector engagement, and integrate its recommendations into national and global policy.
- Strengthening UN human rights mechanisms with resources to monitor, investigate, and enforce the right to food, and ensure states act on their recommendations.
- Aligning FAO, CFS, and OHCHR through UN reform to make the right to food a legally enforceable global commitment and accelerate progress towards Zero Hunger.
- Ensuring that civil society and the most affected groups are meaningfully involved in the UN reform process.
