July is set as the Nutrition Month in the Philippines to create greater awareness on the importance of proper nutrition among Filipinos. But under the current health crisis, people’s access to primary needs such as food and proper nutrition is constantly compromised as a result of broader economic fall-out and food insecurity. A number of population groups are being pushed to hunger and malnutrition even further as a result of Covid-19.

The Commission on Human Rights expresses concern over the impacts of Covid-19 on the nutrition status of Filipinos and underscores State’s responsibility to ensure the respect, protection, and promotion of the human right to food and all related human rights in all decisions and measures taken to contain the pandemic.

While we recognise the actions of the State to protect its citizens from the virus, the measures needed to contain its transmission are resulting to hardships for the most vulnerable families, especially those living in poverty.

Daily nutrition is affected as people shift diets to more affordable, more shelf-stable, and pre-packaged foods, as fresh produce become less available due to the disruption of food supply chain and panic buying incidences. The markets themselves are highly unstable due to uncertainty of food production.

The pandemic also highlights the need to provide adequate protection to agricultural workers through allocation of both financial and technical support to our local small-scale food producers such as peasants, indigenous peoples, fishers, among others. Promoting local food markets by small-scale producers should be complimented with guidelines from both national and local government on social distancing and proper hygiene to avoid the risks of contamination.

In all the food aid programs being rolled out by the government, we call on our line agencies to adopt policies that are coherent with the principles of Economic, Social, and Cultural rights, and ensure that these measures do not have a discriminatory effect, especially for the marginalised and disadvantaged sectors of society. If negative impact is not avoidable, affirmative actions should be taken to ensure substantive equality to avoid further marginalisation.

With or without the pandemic, hunger and malnutrition due to poverty are worsened by bigger structural problems of our society. Similarly, realising the basic right to food goes hand in hand too with upholding people’s rights against ecosystem destruction and anthropogenic global warming. With this, the Commission strongly pushes for the immediate passage of the Zero Hunger Bill to reinforce the constitutionally recognised right of every Filipino to adequate food. ###