Conclusion

Child hunger remains a basic feature in many developing countries affecting, on average, over 30 percent of the world’s children in 2006. The elimination of child malnutrition is a shared responsibility of the child’s family, domestic governments, and the international community. The realization of the child’s right to food requires a coordinated strategy between the state and the international community to respect, protect, provide, and facilitate the child’s caregivers’ efforts to provide adequate food for the child. This study has established the presence of moral and legal arguments forcing duty-bearers to include the rights of children in their budgets, policies, programs, and actions. The child’s right to food and to be free from hunger can indeed be found in a variety of human rights treaties including the Universal Declaration of Human rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These documents create domestic and extraterritorial obligations, particularly for states. UNICEF explains that

states and other duty-bearers are answerable for the observance of human rights. In this regard, they have to comply with the legal norms and standards enshrined in human rights instruments. Where they fail to do so, aggrieved rights-holders are entitled to institute proceedings for appropriate redress …

(UNICEF 2004: 92) Simply put, a human rights approach is based on legal and moral obligations of a duty-bearer to the human rights claim-holder. Under a human rights-based approach to child hunger the child is a subject of law with legitimate claims and entitlements to adequate levels of food against duty-bearers.