Table 1 Consensus statement regarding the nutrition rights of infants

1. Infants have a right to be free from hunger, and to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health.

2. Infants have a right to adequate food, health services, and care.

3. The state and others are obligated to respect, protect, and facilitate the nurturing relationship between mother and child.

4. Women have the right to social, economic, health, and other conditions that are favorable for them to breastfeed or to deliver breast milk to their infants in other ways. This means that women have the right to:

   a. Good prenatal care.

   b. Basic information on child health and nutrition and the advantages of breastfeeding, and on principles of good breastfeeding and alternative ways of providing breast milk.

   c. Protection from misinformation on infant feeding.

   d. Family and community support in the practice of breastfeeding.

   e. Maternity protection legislation that enables women to combine income-generating work with nurturing their infants.

   f. Baby-friendly health facilities.

5. Women and infants have a right to protection from factors that can hinder or constrain breastfeeding, in accordance with:

   a. The Convention on the Rights of the Child,

   b. The International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk substitutes and related World Health Assembly resolutions,

   c. The International Labour Organization's Maternity Protection Convention Number 103 and its subsequent revisions, and

   d. The Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding.

6. States, represented by their governments, have an obligation to:

   a. Protect, maintain, and promote breastfeeding through public

   b. educational activities,

   c. Facilitate the conditions of breastfeeding, and

   d. Otherwise assure that infants have safe access to breast milk.

7. No woman should be prevented from breastfeeding.