Rights-Based Approaches to Ensure Sustainable Nutrition Security

In India, a rights-based approach has been used to address large-scale malnutrition, including both micro- and macro-level nutrition deficiencies. Stunting, which is an intergenerational chronic consequence of malnutrition, is especially widespread in India (38% among children under 5 years old). To tackle this problem, the government of India has designed interventions for the first 1,000 days, a critical period of the life cycle, through a number of community-based programs to fulfill the rights to food and life. However, the entitlements providing these rights have not yet produced the necessary changes in the malnutrition status of people, especially women and children. The government of India has already implemented laws and drafted a constitution that covers the needs of its citizens, but corruption, bureaucracy, lack of awareness of rights and entitlements and social discrimination limit people's access to basic rights and services. To address this crisis, Welthungerhilfe India, working in remote villages of the most backward states in India, has shifted from a welfare-based approach to a rights-based approach. The Fight Hunger First Initiative, started by Welthungerhilfe in 2011, is designed on the premise that in the long term, poor people can only leave poverty behind if adequate welfare systems are in place and if basic rights are fulfilled; these rights include access to proper education, sufficient access to adequate food and income, suitable health services and equal rights. Only then can the next generation of disadvantaged populations look forward to a new and better future and can growth benefit the entire society. The project, co-funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, is a long-term multi-sectoral program that involves institution-building and empowerment.