Does Mandatory Corporate Human Rights Due Diligence Offer A Path to Resolving Global Food Insecurity Challenges

Despite the 2015 implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 (the Zero Hunger Goal), food insecurity remains a persistent global problem. Well past the halfway point to 2030, the world is woefully off track to reach this goal. Current efforts to address global food insecurity are led by the public sector and focused on government interventions, and these are proving to be insufficient on their own. This Article argues that the private sector, and business enterprises and multinational corporations in particular, as important stakeholders in society, can and must assume a greater role in safeguarding and advancing the right to food. In this role, they have a commensurate duty—increasingly recognized in mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR)—to take account of their social impacts, which includes upholding human rights such as the right to food. Secondly, there are international corporate-focused rights frameworks that reinforce this responsibility for businesses, such as the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and a suite of OECD guidelines that promote responsible business conduct. Finally, more than any other actor in society, these corporate actors have the capacity to do so. As such, this Article proposes a bold solution with significant potential to bring about systemic change enhancing global food security: reforming the human rights due diligence process by making it a legally binding obligation, which includes a reconceptualized right to food. Thus, this Article extrapolates from and adds coherence to a clear global trend shifting CSR from soft to hard law, with mandatory corporate human rights due diligence (HRDD) laws becoming an increasingly prominent form. The EU is at the forefront of this trend with hard law regulation of business and human rights already in place at the EU level—the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (2024)—and in Member States such as France and Germany. Therefore, the proposed solution is feasible from a legislative perspective, and it offers an important path to resolving global food insecurity challenges.