ABSTRACT
Chronic hunger and malnutrition affect the lives and futures of millions of people every year. Severe malnutrition is associated with increased physical deformities, skeletal growth retardation, blindness, morbidity, and even death. Furthermore, hunger results in restricted behavior whereby food-seeking activities become the sole focus of life. Food is needed for both human dignity and human development. A human rights approach to hunger calls on the binding obligation or duty of the states or other duty-bearers to fulfi ll the entitlement to food. The hungry individual is a rights claim-holder. A human right to food also allows the hungry to seek remedy and resolution for the violation of the right. The elimination of hunger, using a human rights approach, positions the individual as a subject of law with legitimate claims and entitlements to food against the state as primary duty-bearer. From this perspective, hungry people are legally entitled to adequate food nutrition as a matter of right.
