Access to Justice for the Right to Food: Overcoming Systemic Barriers

Millions of people worldwide continue to face violations of their right to food (RTF) without access to effective legal remedies. Systemic barriers, including poverty, remoteness, gender inequality, weak governance, and judicial reluctance to engage with economic and social rights, prevent marginalized groups such as small-scale farmers, Indigenous communities, and rural women from seeking justice. This project, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), will assess these barriers in three countries, Guatemala, Malawi, and Indonesia, to understand why existing justice systems often fail to protect the right to food and how they can be strengthened.

Through a combination of literature review, stakeholder interviews, and quantitative data analysis, the team will identify and categorize barriers—logistical, political, legal, economic, social, and cultural—that limit access to justice. The research will also highlight enabling factors behind successful cases, such as strong civil society engagement, judicial training, and institutional independence. Data will be collected from international databases, national judicial statistics, and targeted surveys to visualize the prevalence and relationships between key barriers and outcomes.

The final deliverable will provide a comparative, evidence-based assessment of RTF-related access-to-justice challenges and opportunities across the selected countries. It will include actionable recommendations for policymakers, civil society, and judicial actors on how to strengthen accountability, build judicial capacity, and empower affected communities. By mapping both the obstacles and enablers, the project aims to inform FAO’s global work on advancing justiciability of the right to food and ensuring that all people can seek redress when their fundamental right to adequate food is denied.