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	The right to food is a human right by Food & Agricultural Organization   Did you know that every person has a right to food? This doesn’t mean we have a right to charity, but we do have the right to feed ourselves with dignity. It is a human right officially recognized by most countries. This means that governments are obliged to ensure that citizens have the means to buy food or the ability to produce it. If that isn’t happening, citizens can demand that their right to food be respected.   The right to adequate food was first recognized in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the very least this right is meant to guarantee the world’s people freedom from hunger. But the more important aspect of the right to food is that each person has the right to have access to the resources necessary to produce food or to earn money to buy it.   In this way, people are assured the right to live in good health and without the fear that accompanies a lack of food.   In 2004, a number of countries, associations, individuals and organizations tried to put the right to food into practice by adopting the Right to Food Guidelines. The idea was to strengthen and create public institutions and to provide a legal framework to support peoples’ right to food. But it is crucial that such infrastructure be created with input from civil society groups and individuals to enable people to be involved in ensuring their own right to food.   So far, taking a right to food approach to ending hunger has had some success. In Brazil, the government launched its successful Zero Hunger (known as Fome Zero in Brazil) programme with the cooperation of social groups that had been advocating for the country’s hungry people for decades. Also in Mozambique the government has created a draft proposal for a right to food law that takes the problem of HIV/AIDS into account.   Each country faces a different set of issues and needs to take its own specific approach. But each is obliged to do something so that its citizens will be free from hunger and become able to participate actively in their own lives and within their own cultures.   http://www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/ Visit the related web page
	Honouring Raoul Wallenberg by IBA, ILAC, Raoul Wallenberg Institute & agencies Sweden   The Stockholm Human Rights Award 2012 will honour the memory of Raoul Wallenberg, who was born 100 years ago.   Against this background, this year´s laureates, Thomas Hammarberg and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), are particularly well qualified.   Thomas Hammarberg has during his time as the Council of Europe´s Commissioner of Human Rights worked particularly hard to improve the situation of the Roma population, which is today Europe´s most exposed and discriminated ethnic minority. ERRC conducts its often controversial activities in the heart of Hungary, which is one of the countries where the Roma suffer the strongest repression.   Thomas Hammarberg has devoted almost his whole professional life to the promotion of human rights in Europe and the world. From 2006 to 2012, he was the Council of Europe´s Commissioner for Human Rights. Previously, he was secretary general of the Olof Palme International Center (2005-05), Swedish ambassador for human rights (1994-2002), secretary general for the Swedish Save the Children (1986-92) and secretary general for Amnesty International (1980-1986).   European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) is based in Budapest and works to strenghthen the situation of the Roma, through training, information, research and litigation. ERRC was established in 1996 and has successfully promoted the cause of the Roma against Hungary in several prominent cases in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.   The Stockholm Human Rights Award was initiated in 2009 by the International Bar Association(IBA), the International Legal Assistance Consortium (ILAC) and the Swedish Bar Association. It is awarded annually to a person or an organisation for outstanding services in the support of human rights and the rule of law.   http://www.ilac.se/category/news/   Honouring the centenary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg.   The Raoul Wallenberg Institute, in cooperation with Lund University, honoured the centenary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg with a two-day long international event in Lund, Sweden. The events highlighted his remarkable courage, deeds and how his legacy continues to be an inspiration to individuals and groups that work for the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide.   Raoul Wallenberg – his name is associated with outstanding individual courage, humanity and decisiveness. What happened to Raoul Wallenberg remains untold, however, as the facts concerning his fate are still wrapped in uncertainty. It remains uncontested that Raoul Wallenberg made one of the last century’s most remarkable achievements by saving the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the end of the Second World War.   Below follows an overview of his work in Budapest in 1944-45.   When Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944 as secretary to the Swedish Legation, he had no prior background in diplomacy. Raoul Wallenberg, born in 1912 in the renowned Swedish Wallenberg family of bankers, politicians and diplomats, graduated with honors in architecture at the University of Michigan in the United States. Upon return to Sweden in the 30"s, Raoul Wallenberg left for commercial work in South Africa and Haifa, Palestine. In 1941, Raoul Wallenberg was appointed foreign trade representative of the Central European Trading Company, director of which was Kálmán Lauer. Through Lauer, a Hungarian Jew, and his family, Wallenberg made his first acquaintance with Budapest and Hungary through visits in the country between 1941-43.   On 19 March 1944 Hitler invaded Hungary. The new leadership turned over the Hungarian Jews in the countryside to the Nazi’s and almost all of the about 450,000 who were deported, perished. The more than 200,000 strong Jewish Community in Budapest, which had been untouched so far, came in the summer of 1944 into direct life-threatening danger. At the Swedish legation, in similarity to other neutral legations, provisional passports were issued which gave Jews the status of Swedish citizens. More passports and other measures of protection were needed. Reinforcement from Sweden was therefore required in order to accelerate the procedure of protection. After negotiations between the Swedish Foreign Ministry, the American War Refugee Board and the World Jewish Congress it was decided that a Swede would be appointed in order to lead a mission to rescue the Jews of Budapest.   Raoul Wallenberg was chosen upon recommendation by Kálmán Lauer. He found him to be just the “right man for the job”, possessing all qualities needed. Lauer also pointed out Wallenberg’s familiarity with Hungary and his remarkable linguistic talent. Raoul arrived in Budapest on 9 July 1944. At that time the deportation trains to Auschwitz had been strapped, after an intervention by King Gustav V of Sweden, but instead the Jews were brought to different labour camps, mainly at the Austrian border, by trains or in “death-marches”.   One of Wallenberg’s first actions was to launch the “protective” passports, Schutzpass, blue with the three yellow cronors symbolising the Swedish State. From a limited permitted 1,000 copies, Raoul Wallenberg succeeded to raise the quota to 4,500 passports, while other estimates point at triple that amount. Operating from a special department within the Swedish Legation with the assistance of more than 300 volonteers, Wallenberg’s relief work also involved the establishment of thirty-two so called “safe houses” under the protection of the Swedish Legation. 15-20,000 Jews are said to have been rescued in this way.   It is possible that Raoul Wallenberg’s tireless efforts together with actions of other neutral diplomatic missions, the Papal Nunciature and the International and Swedish Red Cross saved as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution – if one includes the 60,000 people living in the Jewish central ghetto at the arrival of the Soviet troops. To achieve these results, it is well known that Wallenberg led negotiations directly with Adolf Eichmann and the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross, which took over power in Hungary after Admiral Miklos Horty, then Head of State, was overthrown in October 1944.   In the midst of these chaotic circumstances, Raoul Wallenberg also drew up a post-war plan on reconstruction and employment opportunities for deportees. Wallenberg brought this plan with him on the day he left the Swedish Legation on 17 January 1945 to visit the Soviet military headquarters in Debrecen in the eastern part of Hungary. Wallenberg was subsequently arrested and brought to the Lubjanka prison in Moscow. The reasons for his arrest remain uncertain but suspicions of espionage on behalf of the Americans as well as his connections with high-level German politicians have been brought forward as main motifs. According to Soviet sources and the so called Smoltsov Report, Wallenberg perished in the Lubjanka prison in July 1947 from infarction. During confidential talks between Swedish and Russian diplomats during the last decade, the Russians stated that Wallenberg in reality was executed.   While this version has also been brought forward during interviews undertaken in connection to a recent report on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg undertaken by a Swedish-Russian working group, no proof or evidence has been found to confirm this theory.   In connection to the release of the report in January 2001, Prime Minister Göran Persson commented “As long as there is no unequivocal evidence of what happened to Wallenberg – and this is still the case – it cannot be said that Raoul Wallenberg is dead.”   In the preface of the report, the Swedish Secretary of State, Hans Dahlgren, makes the following remark of Raoul Wallenberg: “He did not ask what needed to be done. He did not need a decision-making process in the face of evil. His unerring moral compass indicated the path that he should take…. Raoul Wallenberg thus set an example. He knew that we need not always be prepared to do what is right. He showed that we are all able to meet a challenge.”   (Raoul Wallenberg is honorary citizen of the United States, Canada, Israel and the city of Budapest).   * The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law is an independent academic institution. The Institute is named after Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat, in order to honour his work in the cause of humanity.   The mission of the Institute is to promote universal respect for human rights and humanitarian law by means of research, academic education, dissemination and institutional development.   The Institute"s vision is to be a centre of excellence promoting the development of societies based on a human rights culture. The Institute cooperates with a variety of Swedish, European and international partners. http://rwi.lu.se/ Visit the related web page
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