V. The obligation to fulfil the right to food............................................................................................ 32–50 VI. Conclusions and recommendations.......................................................................................................... 51 12 21 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, conducted an official mission to Brazil between 12 and 18 October 2009. The purpose of the mission was to assess the progress made since the 2002 mission of the former Special Rapporteur, Jean Ziegler,[1] as well as the remaining obstacles to the realization of the right to food in Brazil. 2. During the mission, the Special Rapporteur took part in the seminar on claim mechanisms for the human right to adequate food and the national system on food and nutrition security, jointly organized by the Ministry for Social Development and the Fight against Hunger, the National Council on Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA) and the non-governmental organization (NGO) Brazilian Action for Nutrition and Human Rights. He met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Celso Amorim, the Minister for Social Development and the Fight against Hunger, Patrus Ananías, and the Minister for Agrarian Development, Guilherme Cassel. He also met with officials of the ministries of health, education, and agriculture and with the vice-director of the Casa Civil, Mr. Dos Santos. At the Congress, he met deputies from various groups, as well as the President of the Senate, José Sarney, and the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Michel Temer. Meetings were organized also with the head of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Cooperation, Pedro Antonio Arraes; the President of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), Rolf Hackbart; the Inter-Ministry Chamber of Food and Nutrition Security; CONSEA, under the leadership of its chair, Renato Maluf; and members of the Federal Public Ministry, including Gilda Pereira de Carvalho, the head of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office for the Defence of Citizens. The Special Rapporteur expresses his gratitude to Milton Rondo of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Crispim Moreira of the Ministry for Social Development and the Fight against Hunger, as well as to the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations in Geneva for their support during the visit. He is also very grateful to the representatives of civil society whom he met during his mission, including representatives of indigenous and Quilombola communities, and he particularly thanks Sergio Sauer, the National Rapporteur for the Human Rights to Food, Land and Territory. 3. This report offers a general introduction to the enjoyment of the right to food in Brazil. It then examines how Brazil is discharging the three levels of obligations identified by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights under article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:[2] to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food. While fully acknowledging the impressive range of South-South cooperation programmes that Brazil either has initiated or is supporting which seek to promote agricultural and rural development in developing countries, the Special Rapporteur focused on the situation of the right to food in Brazil and regrets that the former aspect of the country’s policies could not be included in this report. II. Overview of hunger and malnutrition in Brazil 4. According to the 2009 Human Development Report, Brazil ranks seventy-fifth among high-income countries. Its ranking according to the Human Development Index has improved considerably, from 0.685 in 1980 to 0.813 in 2007, an average improvement rate of 0.63 per cent per annum, although the improvement rate has been lower recently (0.41 per cent per annum since 2000). If the index’s main components are decomposed, Brazil is above the world average in each category (except gross domestic product (GDP) per capita), but below the Latin America and Caribbean average (except in education). The country’s place on the Human Poverty Index (Brazil ranks 43 out of 135) is considerably better than on the Human Development Index. This suggests that Brazil has been particularly effective in tackling extreme forms of deprivation. However, average Human Development Index levels hide significant regional and ethnic disparities. The 2005 Brazilian Human Development Report shows that African descendants enjoyed on average the same Human Development Index in 2000 as whites had enjoyed in 1980.[3] 5. The latest large sample survey on malnutrition was undertaken in 2003.[4] Among adults, weight deficit was observed in 4 per cent of the population, excess weight in 40.6 per cent and obesity in 11.1 per cent. Malnutrition among adults is a phenomenon closely related to gender in Brazil: below-average weight-to-height ratios above 6 per cent were only observed among women, particularly in the rural north-east, mid-west and south-east regions, and malnutrition was twice or more prevalent among women than among men in nearly all groups. Moreover, 8.5 per cent of women with income below a quarter of the minimum wage displayed weight deficit, whereas for men the prevalence was 4.5 per cent. Ethnicity was associated less strongly with the prevalence of weight deficit, although only among African and African-descendant women in rural areas did the malnutrition rate reach 6 per cent. 6. More recent official data indicates that food insecurity exists in 37.5 per cent of households, although strong regional variations exist, with the rate ranging from 25 per cent in the southern region to 55 per cent in the north-east region.[5] Severe food insecurity is concentrated in households belonging to the lowest income quintiles and in households where the mother’s schooling level is low. The National Demographic and Health Survey of Infants and Mothers showed that ethnic characteristics were also a determining factor: both moderate and severe food insecurity were nearly twice as likely in households where the respondent was an Afro-Brazilian. 7. Child malnutrition was substantially reduced between 1996 and 2006, in particular among children from the north-east region and, in general, among children of lower income families. The average stunting (height-for-age) rate observed was 7 per cent: this was higher for boys (8.1 per cent) than for girls (5.8 per cent), slightly more frequent in rural (7.5 per cent) than in urban (6.9 per cent) areas, with a much higher prevalence in the north of Brazil (14.7 per cent), than in the rest of the country. The mother’s educational level had greater bearing than income level differentials: in families where the woman had less than three years of schooling, the prevalence of stunting was eight times higher than in families where the mother had completed 12 years of schooling. Income differentials between the highest and lowest quintiles were associated with three times greater prevalence of stunting in the lowest