Right to Food

What we do

We Effect will work together with our partner organisations to address the root causes that limit individuals’ and communities’ right to food and adequate housing.

There are many reasons why people’s right to food is not fulfilled. Situations are specific to their contexts, but the main root cause is linked to unjust food production and marketing systems and lack of government strategies to acknowledge and address the rights of the most vulnerable populations. Where these strategies exist, their weak implementation and lack of focus on smallholder farmers are challenges. In our work, we will address both the availability of food and
that people have the means to access it.

From a farmer’s perspective, challenges include denied right to land and water, limited access to extension and financial services, seeds and other agriculture inputs as well as unreliable and distorted markets. Climate change and decline in biodiversity pose further challenges. Government and trade policies often prioritise large-scale farmers and undermine production by smallholder farmers in general, specifically by female farmers. From a consumer’s perspective, the main challenge is often the lack of income to buy food and the lack of access to and knowledge about nutritious food that enables a healthy diet.

Increasing inequalities and growing hunger

We are living in times of multiple crisis that are rapidly changing the preconditions for We Effects development cooperation. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the world has seen the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger multiply. The negative developments are exacerbated by the escalating climate crisis. Women and girls are disproportionally affected.

International commitments on climate and biodiversity are threatened by weak global leadership. Governments across the globe use increased security as an excuse to shut down popular protests and further shrink democratic space.

It is a time of enormous challenges, but we also see opportunities. We Effect is a respected voice in the Swedish development debate and we are a strong development partner. We are an active member of global networks where we join forces with like-minded organisations fighting for common goals. We have seen that the cooperative principles that We Effect was once founded upon, remain more relevant than ever, both in the countries where we work, but also in Sweden.

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