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of states, that is, their obligations to people living outside their jurisdiction. There
is no established mechanism for holding either international agencies or the in-
ternational community as a whole to account.
Intergovernmental agencies such as the World Bank, International Mone-
tary Fund, and World Trade Organization sometimes act as if they were wholly
autonomous, sovereign bodies, answerable to no one. O~cials of the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund have claimed that it is not bound by the international hu-
man rights agreements (Capdevila 2001). This type of attitude has helped to pro-
voke strong criticisms and sometimes demonstrations against some of these
agencies.
These international agencies do have boards of directors to which they are an-
swerable, but often it is those boards that direct the action that needs to be cor-
rected. There are no independent bodies outside these agencies, standing ready
to hold them accountable. On the whole, the international agencies function with
impunity. According to a major United Nations study, Impunity can be under-
stood as the absence or inadequacy of penalties and/or compensation for mas-
sive and grave violations of the human rights of individuals or groups of indi-
viduals (United Nations, Economic and Social Council 1997, para. 20). The
point here is not that the international agencies have committed such violations
but that they are capable of doing so, and there is no institutional mechanism for
holding them to account if they should violate human rights.
Most of the un-related agencies are now adopting a human rights approach,
primarily because Secretary-General Kofi Annan called upon them to do that in
the new United Nations Development Assistance Framework launched in 1997.
global human rights 225
However, there is a di’erence between promoting human rights and acknowl-
edging that one s own agency is subject to human rights obligations. The agen-
cies praise human rights and assert that they are working steadfastly for their re-
alization, but generally they do not acknowledge that they themselves have
obligations with regard to human rights. As Sigrun Skogly observes, Although
willing to take part in a dialogue about human rights, the [World] Bank has never
accepted any legal obligations in this sphere (Skogly 2000, 4). The obligations,
it appears, are for others.
One major reason why the international agencies and the international com-
munity as a whole cannot be held accountable is that their obligations with re-
gard to human rights have not been clearly articulated and accepted. What are
or should be the obligations of the international community with regard to
human rights generally, or with regard to the human right to adequate food in
particular? How should the international community act to honor its obligations?
Which agencies should have what duties? How can the international community,
as a duty bearer, be held accountable?
Strategic Planning
One way to work out the answers to such questions would be to engage the in-
ternational community, together with national governments, in formulating a
solid plan for ending hunger and malnutrition in the world. In chapter 5 we said:
If people have a human right to adequate food, countries must have the
goal of assuring that all people have adequate food. That goal should be
used as the basis for designing a specific goal-directed strategic program of
action. . . . In this approach, the process of realizing rights is the process
of pursuing a strategy to reach a goal.
If we take this to the global level, we would see that the global rights and obliga-
tions could be articulated in the commitments entailed in the global plan for
achieving the goal.
Planning the ending of hunger and malnutrition would have to begin with set-
ting out a clear vision of how a world without hunger would work. How should
future social and economic forces and institutions be reconfigured so that they
no longer produce poverty and hunger? The core task is to create enabling condi-
tions so that everyone has a decent opportunity to provide for him or herself. Dig-
nity comes not from being fed but from providing for oneself and one s family.
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