Italian Court Rules That Food Is A Human Right

An Italian court of appeal has shown some humanity and declared that people who steal food in order to stave off hunger should not be considered as having committed a crime.  Italy’s highest court of appeal ruled that people who are hungry in Italy have a fundamental right to access food – even if that means they steal it. Judges overturned a theft conviction against homeless man Roman Ostriakov, who had been prosecuted for stealing cheese and sausages worth €4.07  from a supermarket in 2015. BBC News reports: Mr Ostriakov, a homeless man of Ukrainian background, had taken the food “in the face of the immediate and essential need for nourishment”, the court of cassation decided. Therefore it was not a crime, it said. A fellow customer informed the store’s security in 2011, when Mr Ostriakov attempted to leave a Genoa supermarket with two pieces of cheese and a packet of sausages in his pocket but paid only for breadsticks. In 2015, Mr Ostriakov was convicted of theft and sentenced to six months in jail and a €100 fine. ‘Right and pertinent’ ruling, say papers For the judges, the “right to survival prevails over property”, said an op-ed in La Stampa newspaper (in [...]