A/HRC/10/5 page 15 countries and donors will “ensure that their respective development policies and programmes are designed and implemented in ways consistent with their agreed international commitments on gender equality, human rights, disability and environmental sustainability” (para. 13 (d)). Grounding development assistance on the human right to food would contribute to this agenda. Since development cooperation programmes would fit into a national strategy for the realization of the right to food defined at national level, the recipient Government would improve its bargaining position in aid negotiations. Since this national strategy would involve national parliaments and civil society organizations, development policies would be democratized. And since it would set benchmarks and allocate responsibilities, it would increase accountability in their implementation. B. Improving the contribution of food aid to the realization of the right to food: the need for disciplined and context-specific food aid 30. Food aid, if not strictly tailored to the needs which have been assessed and to the local conditions, may create unintended - and negative - consequences. When food insecurity is not the result of the absence of well-functioning markets or of insufficient supply, but of insufficient purchasing power for certain segments of the population, the arrival of food aid in kind can undermine local agricultural production, since it leads to a lowering of the prices on domestic markets. In the worst-case scenario, the provision of food aid could lead to reduced investment in the local agricultural sector, increasing the likelihood of future emergencies, leading to what major commentators have referred to as a “relief trap” in international assistance: donors are caught in a vicious circle in which “they can increasingly finance only relief operations accompanied only occasionally by under-funded structural investments”.42 This is why the FAO Guidelines emphasize the need to ensure that international food aid does not disrupt local food production (Guideline 15.1). The FAC also includes a provision according to which, in delivering food aid, the Members should “avoid … harmful effects on local harvests, production and marketing structures, by appropriately timing the distribution of food aid” (art. XIII (a) (i)). 31. Since food aid is generally directed towards regions which experience food insecurity problems, often as a result of failures of domestic production, the arrival of food aid and patterns of food insecurity are statistically correlated. This is not to say that the latter are necessarily caused or aggravated by the former.43 The potential impacts on local agricultural production should not lead to dismissing the usefulness of food aid to meet the needs of the food-insecure, under certain conditions and provided the right instruments are used. In principle, in-kind food aid - through the physical delivery of commodities - will be adequate as an answer to 42 C. Barrett, “Food aid as part of a coherent strategy to advance food security objectives”, background paper for FAO State of Food and Agriculture 2006, p. 3. 43 The studies which documented such effects may have sometimes treated correlation as causality: see FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 2006 - Food aid for food security? at 40-41. See also, for a review of the literature on the impacts of food aid on local markets, C. Donovan, M. McGlichy, J. Staatz and D. Tschirley, “Emergency needs assessments and the impact of food aid on local markets”, Desk study for World Food Programme SENAC Project, 2005.