Ito, Shinya; (2025) The Relationship between the Human Right to Food and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture: A Reappraisal. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Shinya Ito - PhD Thesis.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 July 2035. Download (4MB)

Abstract

This thesis explores food security, a pressing challenge for the international community, from a public international law perspective. More specifically, it offers a reappraisal of the multifaceted relationship between the human right to food in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). It analyses the potential for both norm conflict and mutual supportiveness between the two treaties and makes three main claims. First, the thesis argues that the correct interpretation of the right to food under the ICESCR is its effective and evolutionary interpretation elaborated in legally non-binding but authoritative pronouncements of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). Second, and following this authoritative interpretation, the thesis finds one instance of norm conflict in the area of domestic support at the territorial level, where the AoA prevents WTO members from using public food stockholding programmes for the effective realisation of the right to food under their jurisdiction. The thesis suggests an amendment of the AoA to resolve this norm conflict, while showing the absence of such normative tensions in other areas, namely, market access and export restrictions. Third, the thesis reveals an emerging mutual supportiveness between the ICESCR and the AoA in respect of export competition and export restrictions, where the two treaties positively reinforce each other towards their shared goal of food security in the international community. This complementarity occurs at the extraterritorial level, with the AoA and other WTO instruments facilitating WTO members’ implementation of international cooperation under the Covenant aimed at the universal realisation of the right to food.

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