Pergamon 0306-9192(95)00059-3 Food Policy, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 103-110, 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain. Promoting nutrition rights in Latin America Maria Eugenia Villareai *'~'2 and George Kent t'2'3 *ll a Avenida 6-57, Zona 2, Guatemala ~ Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA In the early 1990s, more than US$1.6 billion was spent annually in Latin America to subsidize food for people at risk of malnutrition. Still, malnutrition persists, partly because many of the programmes now in place are ineffective or poorly targeted. The nutrition rights approach can make feeding, health and education- based nutrition programmes more efficient by making them more decisively goal-oriented. Keywords: nutrition, nutrition rights, Latin America, food aid Most of the nations of Latin America have endorsed the nutrition rights concept through their ratification of major international human rights agreements. More- over, several have articulated nutrition rights in some form in their laws. In most cases, however, the assurances are vague and have not been enforced through the courts. The task, then, is to implement the commitments that have already been made to honour nutrition rights. Several governmental and non-governmental organizations at the national, regional, and global levels have been working to promote nutrition rights in Latin America. Strategies for implementing commitments to assure adequate nutrition are being developed in national and regional campaigns. The idea that nutrition rights are desirable in principle and implementable in practice, even in poor countries, is spreading rapidly. Well-structured nutrition rights programmes, organized on a national basis but with vigorous support from regional and global organizations could make Latin America the first developing region to eliminate child malnutrition as a significant problem. Although there have been serious set-backs as a result of economic crises and structural adjustment programmes over the last two decades, the overall nutrition 1Maria Eugenia Villareai is with the Defense for Children International in Guatemala and Coordinator for the WANAHR Task Force on Children's Nutrition Rights. She may be contacted on e-mail: vilareal@uvg.edu.gt 2Co-Conveners of the new Commission on International Human Rights of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). 3George Kent is Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii and overall Coordinator of the Task Force. 103