Ensuring the right to adequate food under martial law in Ukraine

Abstract

The article clarifies the nature and content of the right to adequate food, the specifics of its enshrining in international legal acts and national legislation, and also reveals the peculiarities of ensuring compliance with the right to adequate food under martial law in Ukraine. The right to adequate food is considered as the possibility for everyone to have free, stable economic and physical access to high-quality and safe food in quantities necessary and sufficient to fully satisfy a person’s physiological needs for food, considering his age, health status, dietary needs, as well as religious, ethnic, and cultural preferences. As a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to adequate food is a basic natural human right and has priority in guaranteeing the right to an adequate standard of living, compared to clothing or housing. After all, a person cannot exist without food, and insufficient food negatively affects health and can pose a threat to human life. The article finds that during martial law in Ukraine, the right to adequate food remains fundamental, ensuring access to sufficient and high-quality food as a component of the right to life and a decent standard of living. The observance of the right to adequate food under martial law in Ukraine is ensured by: the state’s internal function of guaranteeing food security, creating an economic and legal mechanism for safe and balanced nutrition for children in educational institutions, providing adequate nutrition for defenders of Ukraine, as well as nutrition for internally displaced persons, ensuring uninterrupted supply of imported food and feed, simplifying food labeling, preventing shortages of food for domestic consumption, and providing state support for agricultural producers under martial law.