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GNRTFN - Asia Chapter
Joint COVID-19 Monitoring Report on the Impacts of the Right to Food and Nutrition
The report looks into how different governments have responded to COVID-19 impacts and how the measures have contributed to the realisation of the right to food and nutrition for the most marginalised groups and communities in the countries of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
Asia is not only home to more than half of the total undernourished (an estimated 381 million in 2019), several countries in the region are also among the worst hit by COVID-19 in terms of deaths and reported cases (e.g., India, Indonesia and the Philippines).
The region has also witnessed - amidst the COVID-19 pandemic - the introduction of draconian laws (e.g., Omnibus Law in Indonesia, Anti-Terror Act in the Philippines, and the new Draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) in India), offering a pretext for governments to silence opponents and those who criticise the COVID-19 responses, such as inhibiting participation and banning the right to information and assembly.
COVID-19 has also laid bare today’s broken food systems, bringing to the fore the vulnerability, fragility, and inequalities on which they are built. Lockdowns and confinement measures continue to impact the right to food and nutrition (hereafter RtFN) of landless people and peasants, small-scale food producers, agricultural workers, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, and the urban poor.
These communities have been facing the longstanding challenges of seed and land grabbing, climate change and eco-destruction, criminalisation, and discrimination. Among them, those who are mainly engaged in agricultural activities, including women, children, and other marginalised groups such as Dalits, bear the heaviest brunt of these overlapping crises.
Read GNRTFN-Asia Chapter' s entire report by downloading the attached document below.