The right to quality food is an inalienable right of all citizens and it is the State’s duty to create appropriate conditions for all Filipinos to enjoy this right.  

The right to food is an element of all other civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Its recognition means that the State must ensure access to food in sufficient quantity and quality to citizens through a permanent food and nutrition security policy.  

The Philippines is a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No. 2, which is to End Hunger by 2030.

• The sad reality is that four out of every ten Filipinos have little or no food at all on their tables in the last 12 months. There are less than 21 million of the Filipinos in the 3.8 million households rated themselves to have experienced hunger in 2014, thus, ranking the Philippines 5th in a list of countries with people going hungry.
• Hunger problem in the Philippines is caused by various economic, social, environmental and political factors such as, among others, inflation or high retail food prices, low income particularly in rural agricultural areas, lack of productive resources such as land and access to capital, climate change, natural disasters and armed conflicts in severely poor provinces.
• Hunger is a serious health concern with approximately 31,000 recorded deaths in 2013 among children below five years old in the Philippines associated with underweight. This represents 45% of the total child deaths in the country.
• Hunger has an adverse effect on our economy as revealed by a study showing the combined costs of education and productivity losses associated with childhood under-nutrition in the year 2013. The cost is approximately PhP328 Billion equivalent to 2.84% of the 2013 Philippine Gross Domestic Product.
• History has repeatedly told the story that hunger could result to social unrest - in the recent case in Kidapawan area, where 6,000 farmers blockaded a national highway in the southern Philippine province of Cotabato protesting for the release of 15,000 bags of rice as part of calamity funds to support their families in the face of severe El Niño-induced drought.
• There exists a compelling need to create a focused, well-coordinated and broadly participative super agency tasked to orchestrate the efforts of national and local government agencies, the private sector, donor agencies and society at large to ensure the eradication of hunger and full enjoyment of the right to quality and sufficient food for all Filipinos.

Join us by signing this petition and call President Rodrigo Duterte to create the Zero Hunger Commission Now!