The most recent world food crisis has revealed the right to food’s inability to address and prevent such situations. Now is the time to make this right stronger and more effective, moving from voluntary guidelines to binding laws. As we all know, not long ago, the FAO sponsored the creation of voluntary guidelines for the realization of the right to food. Their publishing was widely celebrated, and they were considered the most detailed and comprehensive text designed to make this right a reality for millions of hungry people. There is no doubt that these guidelines provide an exhaustive framework for action and offer detailed coverage of important issues. However, new realities have emerged in recent years, perhaps too quickly and unexpectedly, that have revealed the need to provide more complete regulation of the right to food than that provided by the guidelines. Ideally, therefore, their text should be amended and updated.

The purpose of this book is to indicate some areas and subjects that will have great impact in coming years on the implementation of the right to food and food security and which are, at present, either not or barely regulated. These are the new challenges that the right to food has to face in the 21st century.