In 2008 the United Nations declared a global food security crisis, but what exactly is food security? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, food security “exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 2011). Based on the definition of food security, food insecurity is then defined as “a situation that exists when people lack secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development, and an active and healthy life” (FAO 2011). Food security and hunger are interrelated, but while there are around 852 …show more content…

According to the World Health Organization, more people die of hunger every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined (WHO 2011). The right to water can be affected because those affected by the global food security crisis often also have no access to clean drinking water because of the same conditions that deny them adequate access to food. Lastly, the right to education can be affected becausee “hunger and malnutrition may impair children's learning abilities and may force them to drop out of school and work instead” (FAO 2011). Also, the millennium development goals, which the UN implemented with the plans of achieving by 2015 will be impossible to meet with the global food security crisis we are faced with today. The millennium development goals are: end poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combat HIV and AIDS, environmental sustainability, and global partnership. The reason that it would be impossible to end poverty and hunger are obvious, and the other goals would be impossible to reach with the widespread food insecurity today for many of the reasons tied into the human rights violations explored above. I would now like to look at the causes of the