Lawmakers and the new government should prioritize and ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, FIAN Zambia, Country Coordinator Vladimir Chilinya has said.
Mr. Chilinya said that the new government should actualize and put in place measures and policies that guarantee the realisation of the human right to food.
“This is based on the fact the majority of Zambia’s population is unable to afford a “minimum food basket” or a diversified diet. Further, according to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, Zambia is the country with the seventeenth largest burden of under-nutrition out of 132 countries.
He stated that the new government should honor the obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women by taking immediate action to implement principles that protect the livelihood of rural women and eliminate their vulnerability.
Mr. Chilinya called for strengthened protection against forced evictions, in accordance with the criteria established by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and called for guaranteeing the inclusion of the explicit recognition in the Republican Constitution of the Economic Social and Cultural Rights including the right to food.
FIAN is an international human rights organization that advocates for the realization of the right to food and nutrition.
The organization works and operates in over 50 countries around the world.
