WUNRN
Gender
Excerpts from Presentation
of the Report "Access to Land and the Right to Food"- 65th General
Assembly of the United Nations, 21 October 2010, by the UN Special Rapporteur
on the Right to Food
"...In
order to ensure the protection of women and outsiders to the community, such as
pastoralists, it is important to carefully monitor what is done at the
decentralized level. Article 14, para. 2(g) of the International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women - CEDAW -
guarantees the right of women to equal treatment in land and agrarian reform,
as well as in land resettlement schemes. However, laws and social customs such
as those providing that upon the death of the husband, the land belongs to the
sons and not to the widow, remain in place, despite the flagrant violation of
women's rights this leads to. This should not be allowed, and I express the
hope that the recent establishment by the UN Human Rights Council of a Working
Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and practice, will
provide an opportunity to systematically review such forms of
discrimination."......
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food - Olivier De Schutter
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[21 October] NEW YORK - Today, Olivier De Schutter presented his new report on access to land and the right to food at the 65th General Assembly of the United Nations (Third Committee). The report shows that up to 30 million hectares of farmland is lost annually due to environmental degradation, conversion to industrial use or urbanization. A trend exacerbated by the expansion of agrofuels and the speculation on farmland.
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