Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that, "'Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food" Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) states that everyone has "the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger." Yet today, as many as 1.7bn people are food insecure, of whom probably 950 million chronically malnourished -- and 16,000 children die of hunger-related causes every day.

Desmond Tutu, former Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, and chairman of Nelson Mandela's global crisis task force, known as 'The Elders', described the right to food as "fundamental." "We have it in us to make this a better world, a caring world, a compassionate world in which everyone would enjoy the right to food and freedom from hunger," he said.

Kofi Anan, the former UN secretary general, has called on governments to do more to help small scale farmers, especially women. He also has said banks should extend loans to smallholders so they could grow more food, adding that countries needed to improve rural infrastructure, develop better seeds and improve soil in Africa, "the only continent that cannot feed itself."

Mary Robinson, the former first female president of Ireland, has said it was an outrage that people were still going hungry when there was enough food in the world to feed everyone. "One child dies every five seconds from hunger-related causes and, despite doing the bulk of the work to grow and feed their families, women go hungry the most, accounting for sixty per cent of the world's hungry people. And all this happens when there is enough food in the world to feed everybody."

Circle Up Now worked with ActionAid and The Elders in 2008 in calling for urgent action to end the global food crisis and securing the most fundamental human right -- the right of freedom from hunger.