The Right to Food Between Availability and Accessibility

Description

Today, the realization of the right to food faces unparalleled challenges from armed conflicts, climate extremes, global poverty, economic shocks and COVID-19 pandemic’s enduring impacts. These challenges raise pressing questions about the right’s scope while revealing its structural dimensions and underlying tensions. Food is not merely a biological need, but an expression of identity, culture and community, as well as a politically charged arena of control and resistance.

International human rights law requires states to ensure food availability, accessibility, nutritional and cultural adequacy, and sustainability. This talk explores tensions around availability and accessibility in current food crises, engaging with case studies from Ukraine, India, and Yemen, with particular attention to Gaza, where the 2023–2025 war and ensuing famine warnings underscore the difficulty of disentangling food availability from access amid severe humanitarian constraints and conflict-induced local food system collapse.

Bio

Aeyal Gross is Professor of Law at Tel-Aviv Univesity and Visiting Professor of Law at SOAS, University of London. He teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, constitutional law and human rights. His publications include The Writing on the Wall: Rethinking the International Law of Occupation (2017) and The Right to Health at the Public/Private Divide: A Global Comparative Study (2014) both published by Cambridge University Press. His research encompasses additional topics such as social economic equality and LGBT rights.

Registration

SCILJ appreciates your registration at scilj@juridicum.su.se before 27 April.