Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) and Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum have called on civil society organisations (CSOs) to advocate legislation that criminalises infringements on the right to food.

They made the call in a research report revealing lack of access for all people at all times to enough food.

The report, titled, The Politics of Food: A Contextual Analysis of the Distribution of Food Aid in Zimbabwe, revealed that the same government investing in agriculture was also being accused of enabling the politicisation of food aid.

According to media reports, vulnerable families have had to borrow money, spend savings, sell productive assets, withdraw children from school, reduce non-food expenditure, sell land, beg for food, sell the last breeding stock to buy food and sell more livestock than usual.

In fact, Zimbabwe faces perennial hunger and malnutrition challenges, as millions of people struggle to access adequate food, and they do not have the capacity to afford a basic balanced diet.

‘Nonetheless, there are opportunities for reforming the food aid distribution system and ensuring that said processes are transparent, participatory, non-discriminatory, democratic and anchored in human rights’, the report read.

‘The policies and frameworks are already in place and what is needed is adherence, compliance and enforcement at all levels’.

The study noted that the right to food cannot be viewed in isolation as the realisation of that right was dependent on a broad range of socioeconomic and political factors.

‘It is therefore key for rights-focused civil Society organisations and humanitarian NGOs to work closely together to ensure that the right to food is protected and guaranteed across the board’, the study added.

The organisations advised rights-based CSOs to work closely with humanitarian NGOs to advocate reforms of the food aid distribution matrix.

‘Particularly emphasising the need to adhere to set standards and principles on the non-politicisation and non-discrimination of food aid distribution’, the study noted.

‘Civil society should intensify its advocacy efforts in relation to the depoliticisation of traditional leadership institutions so that they do not continue to infringe on the right to food’.

The study also called on CSOs to advocate the depoliticisation of rural administration so that development programmes in rural areas are not captured by the partisan interests of a single political party.

Source: Zimbabwe Peace Project

Photo source: Columbus Mavhunga/VOA