Human Right to Adequate Food: an essay on extreme poverty and child malnutrition based on Amartya Sen

Abstract

Ensuring the Human Right to Adequate Food (DHAA) is a key point in the fight against hunger and child malnutrition in Brazil, aggravated by the context of extreme poverty, and consequently to life expectancy. Created by Amartya Sen, the Human Development Index (HDI) aims to transform the reductionist idea of economic development to broaden the concept of human progress based on the expansion of capabilities and freedoms under capitalism. This study relates the conditions of poverty, hunger and child malnutrition to the healthy eating promotion based on Sen’s concept of ‘development as freedom.’ Health and human development are interconnected and, when analyzed in contexts of extreme poverty, intensify their restrictive effects on access to healthy food. Public policies need to urgently act in synergy between the areas of health, food, education, income, among others, considering the intersectoriality of food and nutritional safety.