Breaking conceptual and methodological ground: Promoting the human right to adequate food and nutrition - An example of activism with an academic base

The paper provides highlights of the evolving international 'nutrition activism' conducted over two decades that recognises access to adequate food, health and care as human rights embedded in international human rights law. The basic proposition is that truly rights-based approaches offer new opportunities for strengthening monitoring, advocacy and accountability in promoting food and nutrition security, calling for academic and non-academic activism alike. Nutrition scholars may contribute to empirical and policy research on indicators and evidence of fulfilment or non-fulfilment of obligations by states and other actors, in protecting and promoting these rights as preconditions for freedom from hunger and nutritional wellbeing. Also, scholars' allotment of time to certain activities that may be perceived by peers as lying outside legitimised academic activities including networking, lobbying and advocacy, may prove critical in driving some of the very processes on which empirical and policy research would in turn be based.