Mobilizing the right to food as a discourse in cities: a critical reflection

While international human rights law is traditionally a state-centric regime, cities across the world are increasingly engaging with human rights. The human rights discourse is considered empowering, transformative, and bear important rhetorical values. However, the discursive weight of human rights is contested in the realm of local food governance in England, where cities have taken up a pioneering role in upholding people’s right to food, but the human rights language is largely absent. This article explores how local actors in two English cities interpret and mobilize the right to food as a discourse. Empirical data show that the normative pillars of the right to food are reflected in non-rights-framed narratives and local actors’ intuitive interpretation of the right to food aligns closely with international human rights norms. Apart from a lack of awareness that food is a human right under international law, local actors were hesitant about using the right to food discourse more explicitly due to the perceived negative connotations associated with the human rights language and the perceived irrelevance of the right to food at the city level. These findings invite critical reflection on how the right to food discourse can be made relevant in cities. This paper argues that highlighting the alignment between local understanding of the right to food and international human rights norms could turn the right to food into a discursive tool for nurturing human rights consciousness by linking human rights with everyday concerns and concretizing the notion of positive obligations.