Human Rights Activist Will Discuss Treaty to Eradicate World Hunger Oct. 7

A proposed treaty that aims to end hunger with the aid of international law, known as the International Food Security Treaty (IFST), will be the subject of a talk by John Teton, founder and director of the IFST Campaign, on October 7 at Yale Law School. The talk will be held at 6:10 p.m. in Room 128. The public is welcome and admission is free, but seating is limited.

Teton’s talk, “The International Food Security Treaty: Human Rights Law and the Eradication of World Hunger,” is sponsored by the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. A question and answer period will follow.

“In the more than half a century since the right to be free from hunger was established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Teton, “the world has struggled to end hunger without the tool of strong law. The aid and development programs we've relied on instead have proven insufficient to eliminate malnutrition, which still results in a staggering annual death rate and continues to afflict nearly a billion others. And it's not just the malnourished dying slow deaths who suffer—hunger also fuels overpopulation, which in turn inflicts corollary damage on the world's environment, economy, and urban, regional and international stability.”

Teton, a graduate of Harvard, developed the IFST principles in the early 1990s. His appearance October 7 is part of a series of presentations on the IFST at major universities, including Johns Hopkins, the University of California-San Francisco, Harvard Law School, the University of Washington Law School, and Boalt Hall.