17 The rights to food and to water Pooja Ahluwalia Food and water are fundamental for human life and existence. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in its General Comments 12 and 15, noted this, adding that the right to adequate food and to water is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.1 The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (currently Jean Zeigler) has expressed his grave concern that the number of undernourished people around the world has increased to 840 million, and that over 2 billion people worldwide suffer from ‘hidden hunger’, or micronutrient deficiencies – in spite of record availability of food per capita in most countries and globally.2 Further, over a billion persons lack access to basic water supply, while several billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. The root cause of hunger and malnutrition is an inability to access sufficient food, because of poverty and past and prevailing inequalities, resulting in food insecurity.3 Minorities and indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately from economic marginalization, social discrimination and political exclusion. Moreover, women belonging to minority or indigenous groups suffer multiple discrimination because of their ethnicity and gender, both from within and outside their communities. Minority groups are consistently below the national average, and thus vulnerable to low life expectancy and high malnutrition.4 The social, political and economic arrangements (poor economic opportunities, systematic social deprivation, lack of political participation in decision-making or policy formulations) to which minorities and indigenous peoples are often subjected, restrict their capabilities and their access to adequate food and water. Standards The right to food The right to food is codified at the international level in the International Convent on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and has been refined by the useful work of the CESCR set up to monitor its implementation. In Article 11(1) of the ICESCR, state parties recognize ‘the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food’, while Article 11(2) is concerned with ‘the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger’. Similarly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Article