The following is taken from a press release from the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch Consortium.

September 26, 2012 – The fifth annual Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2012, released [this week] by a consortium of 15 civil society organizations, details the structural causes underlying the hunger and malnutrition experienced by almost one in seven people around the world.

The report focuses on exposing who is really in control of decision and policy-making when it comes to food and nutrition. Among the concerns is a trend of unregulated influence of corporate and financial actors over global food and nutrition chains, as well as well-funded global public private partnerships whose strategies place profits over people’s right to food.

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns staff members Kathy McNeely and Dave Kane contributed to chapter three, “Two contemporary challenges: Corporate control over food and nutrition and the absence of a focus on the social determinants of nutrition.”

Also highlighted in the report are new strategies adopted by civil society to exert control over food and nutrition within local, national, and global governance structures. In this respect, the authors welcome the reforms taken by the Committee on World Food Security in 2009, which offers an innovative way for a full-range of civil society stakeholders – who traditionally have been excluded from decision making processes – to be active participants.

The 2012 report from the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch is available here.

The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns’ new paper, “Public-private partnerships: Working together to reduce global hunger,” is available here.

Upcoming events

October 14-21: Churches’ Week of Action on Food (Worldwide)
October 15-20: 39th Session of the Committee on World Food Security (Rome, Italy)
October 16: World Food Day (Worldwide)
October 16: Right to Food and Nutrition Watch - 2012 Launch (Worldwide)

Resources for the Churches’ Week of Action on Food and World Food Day are available at the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance website and at the Church World Service website.

Use these resources to plan events around the October dates, or to plan an event focused on hunger around Thanksgiving.