WUNRN
Excerpts from Report:
The number of people suffering from
hunger has increased every year since 1996, reaching an estimated 854 million
people despite government commitments to halve hunger at the 2000 Millennium
Summit and at the 2002 World Food Summit. Every five seconds, a child under 10
dies from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases.
According to the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the world already
produces enough food to feed every child, woman and man and could feed 12
billion people, or double the current world population.
The right to food is a human right
that protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from
hunger. It is protected under international human rights and humanitarian law.
Particular attention has to be given
to the protection of the right to food for disadvantaged groups, especially
women and indigenous people.
Women play vital roles in the
production and preparation of food, in agriculture and in earning incomes to
feed their families, and as mediators of nutrition education within the family,
if they themselves are educated. It is now widely agreed that women produce
60-80 per cent of food crops in developing countries and play a crucial part in
ensuring the food security of households. And it is increasingly recognized
that the health of women is crucial to the health of entire societies, because
malnourished women are more likely to give birth to malnourished and
underdeveloped babies.
Despite their key role in ensuring
food security, 70 per cent of the world's hungry are women or girls. Women
often face discrimination in gaining secure access to and control over other
productive resources, such as land, water and credit, as they are often not
recognized as producers or juridical equals. According to FAO, while the
proportion of women heads of rural households continues to grow, exceeding 30
per cent in some developing countries, women own less than 2 per cent of all
land. Despite legal and often constitutional rights in many countries, women
still face considerable obstacles to inheritance, purchase and control of land.
In many countries, despite formal protection against discrimination, women lack
any real access to land, a problem which is exacerbated by a lack of
inheritance rights.
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ADVANCE EDITED VERSION |
Distr. GENERAL A/HRC/7/5 10 January
2008
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HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Seventh Session
Agenda Item 3
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