New international food assistance research calls for improved cooperation

28 Feb 2024 --- In the context of the continued growth of global food insecurity and the bleak chance of reaching the UN SDG objective of zero hunger by 2030, this new research paper explores how international law shapes international food assistance. The author asserts that to improve results, the relevant actors and institutions need better coordination and complementarity toward shared objectives.

Clarisse Delaville of the McGill University Faculty of Law, Canada, considers the variations in institutions and norms, pointing to the fact that no single global authority or law regulates food assistance on an international level.

The author uses the concept of “regime complex” to shed light on the dominant narrative shaping international food assistance as “a range of different but partially overlapping institutions governing a particular area or different institutional regimes dealing with an identical issue from various angles.”

In the context of international food assistance, Delaville identifies two main “regimes”: the food trade regime, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) as its central institution, and the food assistance regime, with the FAO, the WFP and the 2012 Food Assistance Convention (FAC) in the lead.

Food trade and food assistance
Published in the Journal of International Trade Law and Policy, the paper finds that the concept of “regime complex” can be used to clarify the evolution of international food assistance, highlighting international law as a crucial element in shaping international food assistance programs.

It reveals that the food trade regime and the food assistance regime interact and shape policies based on three key factors — the centrality of donor states’ self-interests in shaping food assistance, the relationship between international food assistance and trade liberalization and the goal of achieving food security for beneficiaries.

Earlier this month, the African Union leaders called for additional funding and improved fiscal management to tackle the rising levels of childhood malnutrition amid the continued and severe funding shortages faced by the WFP and other relevant international organizations since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Delaville highlights the importance of donor countries’ self-interest, which was particularly important during the 1960s, the early days of international food assistance. 

Not long after it appeared, the dominant narrative in both the food trade and food assistance regimes dictated that trade liberalization is vital to ensuring food security, thus asserting that international food assistance should come in the way or risk causing trade distortion, which remains the dominant perspective. 

Need for cooperation
The paper makes a link between these first two factors and the third, the goal of meeting beneficiaries’ nutrition needs, asserting that their influence has caused some of the issues associated with assisting those facing food insecurity. The paper highlights the role of development experts and NGOs as crucial in mediating some of these negative effects. 

Delaville concludes that to improve food assistance outcomes, the existing institution and relevant actors are to work to improve their coordination so their work complements each other rather than works against each other. 

She further asserts that creating a brand new law or institution to deal with all aspects of global food insecurity is not presently a viable option, as she argues this would only add another layer to the already overly complex institutions acting within the regimes.

At the start of this year, UNICEF presented a new global framework for practitioners working in the fields of nutrition and child poverty, asserting that agents of these two domains need to work better alongside each other to address common challenges. 

By Milana Nikolova