Speaking at the World Food Day ceremony held at FAO headquarters in Rome, director-general Jacques Diouf said that by eliminating social and environmental obstacles to food these rights can be ensured, even if a country is not experiencing economic growth.
"These do not imply costs for public spending," said Diouf of the measures.
He used the example of Brazil, which he said has shown remarkable change in the past decade thanks in part to firmly entrenching the right to food, as well as supplying cash grants to families.
Since the FAO was created on this day in 1945, the issue of world hunger has not gone away and only seems more unacceptable when considering there is enough food to go around.
"Our planet produces enough food to feed the entire planet," said Diouf. "But tonight 854 million men, women and children will go to sleep on an empty stomach."
And the price crunch being felt in the food industry is reverberating through to the world's poor. Staples such as wheat and milk have seen price rises mainly due to climate-change induced weather fluctuations that affect harvests, the switch to biofuels, as well as increasing demand from new and emerging markets.
The right to food is firmly entrenched in international law and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Adopted by the UN in 1966, and put into effect in 1976, ICESCR is a multilateral treaty committing countries to granting fundamental rights to individuals. In his address, Diouf drew on its definition of the right to food:
"It is the right of every man, woman and child alone and in community with others to have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement in ways consistent with human dignity."
With hunger rampant in the world, this principle remains far from being put into practice.
At the ceremony, Tanzania's president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, stated that "40 000 children die every day throughout the world due to malnutrition and related diseases. These are the people who are being denied the right to food. These are the people who are the subject of this year's World Food Day."
He added that the ultimate solution lies in improving agriculture, especially in Africa.
The President of Germany, Horst Köhler - also a keynote speaker at the event -underscored the notion of ownership and dignity, stating that people should have an adequate supply of food from their own fields and the surrounding region. In developing countries, this requires a type of agriculture based on empowering communities with the know-how and jurisdiction over their own fields.
He said "all people have a right to healthy food, produced in a sustainable manner appropriate to their culture. Democratic participation by the people is the best guarantee that governments will genuinely understand people's basic needs and will take these into account."
Diouf added that the right to food also consists of protection from, or at least compensation for, those environmental changes carried out by man that impinge a community's ability to feed itself. These include decisions over the allocation and use of land, such as for forestry or dams.
Agricultural development was also highlighted as a means of staving off the potentially worsening effects of climate change, and any subsequent results on hunger. This was put forth in a message from the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Lennart Båge.
He stated that "three quarters of the world's one billion extremely poor people live in rural areas, many already suffer from hunger and malnutrition, but new and growing challenges such as climate change are making them all the more vulnerable. This is why now, more than ever, the world has a pressing moral obligation to invest in agricultural development to combat hunger and restore dignity to the poor."
