Thank you, everybody.
As the UN special rapporteur, I am the eyes, ears and good conscience of the UN system when it comes to the right to food. That means that the UN Human Rights Council has mandated me to regularly report to them and the UN General Assembly on matters regarding hunger, malnutrition and famine from a human rights perspective.
For the last two and a half years, I have had a unique perspective on the food crisis. I have consulted governments and communities from every single region of the world. I have also directly engaged with over a dozen international organizations at the highest levels and at working levels. I bore witness to how women face overwhelming degrees of discrimination and violence, all while having to feed their families and communities.
In 2021, the number of children in child labour globally increased to 160 million. This is the first rise in 20 years, and this is mostly in the agricultural sector. Workers, peasants, pastoralists and fishers are essential to making sure that we all eat, but they've been treated as expendable. Indigenous peoples' homelands are being stolen, occupied and decimated at genocidal rates.
In light of all this, last year the UN General Assembly requested that I report on the food crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am happy to share with you today some of my findings. I am speaking as an international expert, but I should add that I practised law in Ontario for several years before taking up this position.
The ultimate takeaway from an international perspective is that there remains no international co-operation and coordination to tackle the food crisis. Without international co-operation and coordination based on the right to food, it will be very difficult to overcome the food crisis.
I suggest that the Committee on World Food Security is the best place to develop an international plan for co-operation and coordination. Something to keep in mind is that this is a long-standing issue. Before the war in Ukraine and before the COVID-19 pandemic, hunger and malnutrition were on the rise. Even if the war in Ukraine and the pandemic ended tomorrow, we would still find ourselves in a global food crisis that would be getting worse.
Let me get to my report. First, I identify structural challenges that make it difficult to tackle the food crisis. The structural challenges are rising debt rates for all countries, an international trade system that doesn't serve people's real needs, and an increasing concentration of corporate power in food systems. Second, I identify what can be done in the immediate term and what steps can be taken now to serve needs in the long term.
As an immediate response, I recommend that governments build on what worked during the pandemic. Many governments are starting to end pandemic relief measures, but these measures provided proof of what is possible to realize the right to food. My suggestion is to make these programs permanent; do not end them.
In the long term, I recommend that all countries transition their food systems through agroecology. Agroecology is a practice based on science, on traditional knowledge and on social justice. It is a practice committed to mimicking ecological processes. It treats the goals of enhancing biodiversity and enhancing justice as one and the same.
I also explain in my report how governments can repurpose existing budgets and use their national food plans to devise a transition to agroecology. This is through three things: one, providing a just transition for workers; two, ensuring strong land rights and genuine agrarian reform; and three, holding corporations accountable.
Finally, I explain why an explicit affirmation of the right to food is important. It is worth remembering that Canada has an international obligation to fulfill the right to food as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and as a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In the simplest terms, the right to food means that everyone has the right to access good, healthy food. People can access good food through fair and stable markets or through access to land and natural resources. Importantly, the right to food provides a very specific international framework that enables international co-operation.
I look forward to any questions you may have.
Thank you very much.