Developing Capacity to Realise Socio-Economic Rights

HIV/AIDS has serious implications for food security since the disease impacts people's ability to produce, purchase, and prepare food. Conversely, poverty and food insecurity impact the vulnerability toward HIV infection and development of AIDS. The lack of physical and economic access to food and health services in poor, AIDS-affected communities calls for a human rights-based approach. How can we address these issues from a human rights perspective? What would be the possible rights-based policies to deal with them? This book conceptualizes the right to food in the light of HIV/AIDS, by identifying States' obligations and the required capacity to meet these obligations. The book deals with issues, such as authority and mandate, commitment to obligations, access to resources, communication capacity, and the capacity to monitor and evaluate. It suggests a set of indicators representing ideal standards of fully-fledged obligations and capacity. The indicators are considered key to the understanding, implementation, and monitoring of the right to food for people who are infected with, and affected by, HIV and AIDS. Examples from South Africa and Uganda illustrate that the issue of HIV/AIDS and nutrition can be extremely politically sensitive. The book underscores the mutual interdependence between the rights to food and health as well as other human rights. It will be of interest to academics and policy-makers, governmental and non-governmental organizations alike both within and beyond the human rights field.