Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2008. "Methods to Monitor the Human Right to Adequate Food". Volume II, An Overview of Approaches and Tools.
- Objective: To integrate a right to food perspective in planning, monitoring and government efforts to promote towards food security, nutrition and poverty reduction policy development and programming
- Key characteristics: Focused on the right to food, uses structure, process and outcome indicators, designed for use by government and CSOs.
- Brief summary: Sets out various tools that can be used to monitor and assess the realization of the right to food. Presents the monitoring framework, including: the core content of the right to adequate food (RAF) (building on the concept of food security and using the 4A framework), state obligations (using the right to food matrix as a systematic normative approach), human rights principles (the difference between equity and equality, transparency, accountability, rule of law, human dignity, participation and inclusion, empowerment and recourse mechanisms), applying the right to food monitoring framework (to the core content of the right to adequate food; policies, programs and other government actions; legal and institutional factors that condition the impacts of policies etc and how state obligations are fulfilled; public resource allocation) and the Right to Food Guidelines as a monitoring framework (covering structures, processes and outcomes). It also provides indicators (structure, process and outcome) to measure the progressive realization of the RAF and lays out the monitoring implementation processes. It also explains how to monitor the impacts on the realization of the RAF, and how to do so on the community level. It lays out various information gathering methods and techniques, and how to share monitoring information, including maps. Annexes include: clarification of relevant and commonly used terms; data inventories; dietary assessment methods; an example of rights-focused assessment and monitoring of school feeding programs; maps as presentational tools in monitoring the human right to adequate food; preparing monitoring reports for international human rights bodies.
- Best used for: Creating an in-country monitoring process on the right to food and implementing it. Provides excellent tables and checklists for e.g. state responsibilities at every level.
- Data needed: A series of indicators (structure, process and outcome), all listed in paper.
- Tested?: Tested in series of country case studies - gives country examples throughout the paper.
- Possible disadvantages: To what extent can assessment results be used to influence future policies?
- Going forward: How to ensure monitoring mechanisms are sustainable?
- Complementary tools: The rest of teh FAO series, which provide the normative framework for such an analysis.