The World Trade Organization and the Post-Global Food Crisis Agenda

This policy note offers a preliminary assessment of the compatibility between the WTO and efforts to protect the human right to adequate food as part of the post-crisis food security agenda. Existing WTO rules do include certain flexibilities for States to pursue food security-related measures. From a right to food perspective, certain elements of the draft modalities in agriculture are an improvement on the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), most notably proposed changes to the green box criteria on public stockholding for food security. However, many of these modifications to the AoA are relatively modest and even these are by no means assured with the outcome of the Doha Round highly uncertain. Many elements of the AoA and the draft modalities continue to fall short of offering a favorable policy framework for the realization of the right to food, such as the narrow range of policy measures that could be used to potentially establish national and regional food reserves and domestic institutions to manage price and income volatility for poor rural households.