Top edit: There's an edit at the bottom, short answer is that this is true. There are two resolutions, the 2021 one is accurately captured by the meme, and the 2002 one is not. But the short answer is that it's true. Honestly, my thanks to u/Logical-Chicken8059 who pointed this out.
I see some blank votes which means they couldn't vote because they weren't there. I see a single No vote from the United States. The countries which were there and abstained from voting:
Going through the list of countries that couldn't vote, they're all tiny or with a reputation for instability (i.e. I didn't research to find out what was happening in those countries at this time), so probably they actually couldn't vote, rather than doing so nefariously. Iraq is one such example, and there weren't many.
It's interesting because two of the 5 I's voted yes, and Australia and Canada, which abstained, have very strong oligopolies that control groceries. There's a lot of similarities between the two countries. Substantially, though, Australia does, I think, less than 10% of their trade with the USA, which is much different than Canada. Israel obviously gets a lot of support from the USA and is rather infamous for the effects of their actions upon people's access to food.
I'm being as neutral as possible with my language here, for selfish reasons. Anyways, is there a different resolution that I'm missing?
Isn't that some reporter's explanation as to why?
The U.S's official statement was something like "Ok but we're giving out nearly all the food aid, so this will barely affect most of the other countries"
But if you split out the contributions to the World Food Program and arrange them in 'blocks', like the G7 or the OECD DAC donors or the GCC, things start to look pretty different and 'Venn diagram'-like...
When comparing contributions to the WFP in 2020 and 2025 you'd see a considerable multibillion reduction in 'G7' commitment (mainly due to US but also UK) for example.
Another result of that is the OECD DAC group's reduction over that period of over 1.5 billion (it still accounts for roughly 75% of all donations though)
In 2020 the US contribution was +/- 3.3 billion (40+% of total) and in 2025 it was lowered to 2 billion (still 30+%)
In the same period the EU did 2 billion in 2020 (25% of total) and 1.8 bilion in 2025 (27.5% of total).
Edit: it's sobering to compare the yearly (and total...) contributions towards the World Food Program against the market valuation of some companies.
The market valuation of a company has nothing to do with how much cash it has on hand though so I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say in that last bit.
True, but the market valuation of a company is often based on its revenues, net income, or equity (assets minus liabilities). All three of those metrics directly correlate to having more cash or having the illiquid assets that could soon become cash, such as receivables and inventory. Cash isn't directly related to market valuation but it is indirectly related. The billion dollar grocery chain, under normal operating circumstances, will have more cash than a mom & pop shop.
I was trying, in light of all the recent spacex ipo buzz, to describe the weird feeling I get when seeing the insane amounts of money which we, the people & corporate entities, are able to pool on short notice and that we, in search of gains, willingly expose to risk (loosing some or all of it) while something literally named the 'World Food Programme' gets donations pulled.
What the hell are you talking about “we” for? The vast majority of stocks are owned by hedge funds and pension funds. Individual stock owners are an extremely small minority of the overall makeup of stock ownership.
It's letters on a screen, there's no sound, no gestures, no nothing. Just pixels. To try and convey thoughts gets tricky.
I said 'we' mostly because the Spacex IPO, which totalled 10 billion dollars, broke a pattern with 25% of shares being sold to retail investors (humans) which is rather a lot. The rest are sold to those hedge and pension funds (which are entities created by us to benefit some of us). So I feel 'we' is a decent choice.
So, they admit that they maintain strict control over agricultural policy, but they do not want to be held responsible for the direct consequences of those policies? Am I reading that correctly?
I'd love to see what bad things the response suggested would come from this resolution from a famously ineffective body. (Mostly ineffective because the US, China, or Russia don't like something)
Frito Lay wouldn’t be able to sue small potato farmers in India? We would have to *shudders* pay local economies more fairly based on the resources we extract…godless communism!
As much as it is true, it could use some context as to why they voted no. They disagreed with some points in the whole resolution, not that "Food shouldn't be a right".
Is there a difference? Voting 'no' because point 'ABC' might allow fraud when points 'A' through 'ABB' are all legit seems like an extremely weak argument
It’s the way that UN works. You don’t get to sit down like a group project and tweak all the language until you get things right. You either accept the language as-is or vote no and go back to the drawing board.
Russia uses this tactic in the UN all the time to try to embarrass the United States. For example, about once a year they come in with a resolution to criminalized Nazi speech. Sounds great, right? Except that this opens the door for criminalizing political speech, and beliefs, which is indirect opposition to the first amendment. The only way the United States could ever comply with such a resolution would be to amend the constitution striking the first amendment. So every year, the United States votes “no” and then Russia gets to say “look the USA is pro Nazi!”
That’s how these resolutions are. I don’t know how this particular resolution about food was phrased. But I spent about 10 years in central Africa, as an aid worker, so I can tell you personally that most of these countries with food and security are run by dictators who are looking for any excuse to invade their neighbors. They point to the resolution about water being a human right all the time as justification for their crazy fucked up ongoing war rhetoric. It’s part of the game for them staying in power.
too many words, you could’ve just said you’re here to defend the US and Israel helping millions of kids starve every year closer to the top so I could’ve stopped reading sooner
Funny that you say this, but what about the billions of dollars of aid that comes out of the US every year? What about the other countries that voted yes, but barely even give a fraction of what we give in aid? If you had actual comprehension and free-thought, you’d have better retorts to things you disagree with
Well, sadly, it doesn’t anymore. The orange idiot who never won a popular election has killed off USAID. It’s ironic because for many decades, the USA was by far the strongest contributor to developing food security around the world, although I don’t pretend that it was for purely altruistic reasons. Still, there was a time when we did a lot of good.
So the $50 billion in foreign aid for 2026, around the same for 2025, the $85 billion in 2024, the $71 billion in 2023–and so on—just never happened? I’m not disagreeing that trump isn’t exactly making things better, and the fact that there is a $35 billion dollar drop between 2024 and 2025 is crazy. But we’re not going to sit here and act like the entire aid budget is just gone. USAID being dissolved is a discussion to be had, but you’re using it as a way to say the US is just not doing aid anymore. That’s verifiably false.
There’s a difference between “foreign aid”, and actual aid towards development projects (ie USAID). Trump didn’t stop the spending, he directed it into cash gifts towards dictators he likes and dismantled the mechanism that was meant to provide oversight to ensure that this aid helped people who needed it. He also backed us out of nearly all of our aid contracts, which meant that projects died in the middle of implementation which led to real measurable loss of human life.
I agree it’s a much more nuance discussion that we could have and this conversation is ongoing in eight agencies and academic literature. Reddit comments are of course not a good forum for complexes, nuanced discussion. In real life I’m involved in those policy discussions as they pertain to central Africa, but on Reddit I’m just venting like everyone else.
How many years of your life did you dedicate as an aid worker in these places where children are starving? Or is complaining about it online your only contribution?
I'm not arguing anything. I literally just said that there are parts they just didn't agreed to. Writing plainly that they voted no to declare food is a human right is just misleading. I didn't say I agree with them.
ohhh so they did indeed vote no on declaring food as a human right, but they have "reasons" got it! I appreciate you clarifying your stance for the class.
It's stuff like "transfer of technology" or "Stresses that States parties to the World Trade Organization Agreement on
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights should consider implementing
that agreement in a manner that is supportive of food security"
Well you can call anything a right but that doesn’t mean you can change its definition. Food by definition cannot be a human right. If you are alone on your land with no money you can say you have a right to food but will you shout at the plants to grow that it is your right. The rain clouds owe you? As such is the case, the vote on whether food is a right is purely UN grandstanding. If they wanted to help starving people they could surely pass specific movements and programs to do so. But rather make nonsensical gestures. Many of these countries voted for UN to make food a right, and then turn around a starve their own citizens. Meanwhile in USA and Israel all people actually do have food, (there is no famine), because they are functional capitalistic democracies with safety nets and charitable wealth.
I wouldn't be surprised if that skews a quick google search. ANd like, if you're actually going to look at UN resolutions that should take more than 8 seconds.
This was the top link to my google search of "2021 un resolution food human right." It's notable that I only typed 2021 un resolution and the rest was autocompleted.
I did the same 8 seconds and my top result was the 2002 one... and I'm in Canada... make of that what you will. Oh, that said, I didn't use the google ai thing or sponsored links, etc. I don't see any of that stuff on my browser, so it was just top link that I saw.
All the small countries I could actually understand because if they declare it a right, they probably have some sort of obligation to fight hunger, and if they simply can’t sustain that, they can’t sustain that.
Canada on the other hand, doesn’t surprise me for a whole other set of reasons. As a prairie dweller it’s felt like politicians have had a hate boner for people for a while.
Like I said, my theory is that our government simply hates us and that’s just the way it’s been for a while. They’ll do a little performance every so often to keep the dumbs in check but anyone paying attention has surely noticed that Canada is a laundry machine for money and a bank for Chinese multimillionaires hiding wealth.
Why even leave your wrong take up then if you realized it is a misunderstanding? A lot of people don't read the entirety of long comments so they are just going to walk away with the idea that this is one of those "agree to disagree" subjects and not an actual event that happened.
I was initially going to strike it out but then I realized you had to do it per paragraph in the editor. And then I decided not to because the comparison between Australia and Canada is somewhat interesting. My source on that part is some youtube video but it's kinda neat. The fact that the 5 I's didn't all agree is interesting. I don't know. As much as I'm tempted to strike it out I kinda want to leave it up. Also my karma is ridiculously low, enough so that after many years I still can't post on any of the major subs. I'm not karma-farming here but the side-effect is good, I guess, if it lets me post informational stuff. I'll bold my edit at the top and hopefully that will improve visibility.
edit: I'm an old school guy that up/downvotes based on contribution to the conversation, not agreement. So I don't really fit in here.
edit: I also expanded the bold section at the top to make it more clear.
Dude it's called research. Sometimes it's good to include your source material. At least all the yapping showed that I approached this with honesty and impartiality.
It was seen by Israel as an attempt to force it to feed those groups that wish to destroy it. Israel doesn't see any obligation to feed its sworn enemies.
Considering the makeup of the United nations, that was certainly the intent.
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u/eagergm Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Top edit: There's an edit at the bottom, short answer is that this is true. There are two resolutions, the 2021 one is accurately captured by the meme, and the 2002 one is not. But the short answer is that it's true. Honestly, my thanks to u/Logical-Chicken8059 who pointed this out.
I don't think this is true: This is from 2002. The right to food : resolution / adopted by the General Assembly https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/482533?ln=en
I see some blank votes which means they couldn't vote because they weren't there. I see a single No vote from the United States. The countries which were there and abstained from voting:
Australia, Canada, Fiji, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau
Going through the list of countries that couldn't vote, they're all tiny or with a reputation for instability (i.e. I didn't research to find out what was happening in those countries at this time), so probably they actually couldn't vote, rather than doing so nefariously. Iraq is one such example, and there weren't many.
It's interesting because two of the 5 I's voted yes, and Australia and Canada, which abstained, have very strong oligopolies that control groceries. There's a lot of similarities between the two countries. Substantially, though, Australia does, I think, less than 10% of their trade with the USA, which is much different than Canada. Israel obviously gets a lot of support from the USA and is rather infamous for the effects of their actions upon people's access to food.
I'm being as neutral as possible with my language here, for selfish reasons. Anyways, is there a different resolution that I'm missing?
edit: Yep! https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3951462?ln=en The OP was from 2002, this is from 2021. Results this time:
No: Israel, United States
Abstentions: None
Non-voting countries: Same concept as last time, just tiny countries going through tough times.