Human Right to Adequate Food: an essay on extreme poverty and child malnutrition based on Amartya Sen

Abstract

Abstract Ensuring the Human Right to Adequate Food (HRAF) is a key point in the fight against hunger and child malnutrition in Brazil, aggravated by the context of extreme poverty, allowing an increase in life expectancy. The Human Development Index (HDI) was created by Amartya Sen to transform the reductionist idea of economic development to broaden the concept of human progress based on the expansion of capabilities and freedoms under capitalism. This study aims to relate the conditions of poverty, hunger, and child malnutrition to the healthy eating promotion, based on Amartya Sen’s concept of development as freedom. Health and human development are interconnected and, when analyzed in contexts of extreme poverty, intensify their restrictive effects on access to healthy food. Public policies need to urgently act in synergy with the areas of health, food, education, income, among others, considering the intersectoriality of food and nutritional safety.