Redefining the Right to Food

AuthorPranoto Iskandar
PositionCambridge University Press, 2016
Pages647-649
e Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law
ISSN: 2338-7602; E-ISSN: 2338-770X
http://www.ijil.org
© 2016 e Institute for Migrant Rights Press
Book Review
REDEFINING THE RIGHT TO FOOD
State Food Crimes, by Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Cambridge
University Press, 2016
One of the great debates in the foundational dimensions of the inter-
national human rights discourse is whether the fundamental nature of
basic rights theoretically allows for an acceptance of “positive rights”
as legitimate human rights. At the heart of this dispute is the fact that
“positive rights” require a hands-on approach that to some degree asks
for a signicant amount of public resources. It is at odds, for that mat-
ter, with the traditional 17th century civil-political rights that simply
aim in limiting the power of the State. Historically, the persistence of its
polarizing nature cannot be separated from the competition between
the two great competing philosophical traditions, i.e. collective-social-
ism on the one hand and individual-liberalism that predominated the
post-1945 eort in global order building. For what its worth, despite
the fact that its delicate nature has survived in the theoretical realm;
in the real world, as some have argued, there are empirical grounds to
claim with a growing condence that both the self-professed liberal
and socialist States are beginning to come to terms with the conciliato-
ry mode where both are converging to the center is inevitable.

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