Regulating Food Prices in Tanzania; Free Market against Human Rights

Abstract

The role of the state in regulating market dynamic is becoming very limited for the reason of ‘Free market/market led economy policy’ which requires minimum or no state intervention in commerce. This principle seems to be putting too much pressure on the governments to respect business interests at the expenses of human rights like right to life and food as basic need for survival. Free market policy is becoming a very big challenge in answering the question of the World Summit on Food security which is ‘How to feed the world in 2050 with a population of 9 billion people?’^[1] This question is relevant to be answered in Tanzanian context because the problem of food security is projected to hit more on developing countries and Sub Sahara Africa because of the fast growing population in those countries.^[2] The Tanzania Human Rights report for 2012 points out that about 1,062,516 in different regions in Tanzania were experiencing food insecurity^[3]

The main issue of this article is to examine the balance of interests between free market policy and human rights laws specifically in regulating food prices. The ultimate goal is to see the possibility of having the laws which respects free market economy without affecting human rights like the right to life and food security. In other words, this article will examine the possibility of using human rights as an exception to strict application of the principles free market economy when it is necessary to regulate food prices at the time of critical shortage of food. The states need to respect free market policy and at the same time ensure that its people’s life is protected by ensuring access to basic food.

It is important to examine the legal options for state interventions to free market policy in regulating food prices so as to guarantee poor people access to basic food at the time of critical shortage of food in order to protect their right to life.

[1] World Summit on Food Security in 2009 at Rome at www.fao.org/wsfs/world-summit/wsfs-challenges

[2] ‘Food Security : The Challenges’ a paper published by Cargill available at  www.cargill.com/wcm/group/public

[3] The Tanzania Human Right Report for 2012 pg 215