The Bush administration has once again isolated America by rejecting a UN resolution which would defend the human right to food. An unusual majority of 131 countries sponsored the resolution, with 44 other members voting in favor of it last Friday. After a week of debates on humanitarian affairs, US diplomats were the only ones in the UN to vote against the resolution supporting the Right to Food. Diplomats across the globe criticized the US delegation for ignoring the right of every person to not suffer from hunger. They sustained that “hunger is an disgrace and violates human dignity.”

While most people in the world would regard food as the most fundamental of human rights, in capitalist societies the government’s only responsibility is to keep relations between its citizens peaceful. Thus, authoritarian control is often used to “keep the peace”, maintaining the status quo. In the past few years, the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider. As Howard Zinn has pointed out, the Constitution does not give us economic rights. We may have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but without the right to food, housing, and health care, our constitutional rights are meaningless.

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