Introduction: Food, Water and Human Rights
Hello and welcome to my blog! This blog will be exploring some of the issues related to water, food and development in a variety of African countries. Photograph of growing crops (background) and dry ground (foreground) source: Judd McCullum Why water and food? Other than oxygen, both water and food are undeniably two fo the most essential building blocks for human life. Perhaps this is why access to water and food are recognised as basic human rights by the United Nations (UN). Food is expressed as a basic human right under Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and although water is not explicitly mentioned in the UDHR, "Access to water and sanitation are recognised by the UN as a human right". However, despite their human rights status, over 10% of the global population lack access to adequate food and water; 785 million people lacked access to a basic drinking water service in 2017 and 820 million people were still hungry in 2018.