WUNRN
RIGHT TO FOOD RESOLUTION - UN HUMAN
RIGHTS COUNCIL SESSION 22 - GENDER
Direct Link to Full 8-Page
Resolution:
Gender Excerpts:
*Recognizing the importance and positive role of
smallholder farmers, including women, cooperatives and indigenous and local
communities in developing countries,
3. Considers
it intolerable that, according to an estimation by the United Nations
Children’s Fund, more than one third of the children who die every year before
the age of 5 years do so from hunger-related illness, and that, according to an
estimation by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the
number of people who are undernourished is approximately 870 million worldwide,
98 per cent of them living in developing countries, and that there is an
additional one billion people suffering from serious malnutrition, including as
a result of the global food crisis, even though, according to the latter
organization, the planet could produce enough food to feed twelve billion
people;
5. Also
expresses its concern that women and girls are disproportionately affected by
hunger, food insecurity and poverty, in part as a result of gender inequality
and discrimination, that in many countries girls are twice as likely as boys to
die from malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, and that it is estimated
that almost twice as many women as men suffer from malnutrition;
6. Encourages
all States to take action to address de jure and de facto gender inequality and
discrimination against women, in particular where it contributes to the
malnutrition of women and girls, including measures to ensure the full and
equal realization of the right to food and ensuring that women have equal
access to social protection and to resources, including income, land and water
and their ownership, as well as full and equal access to education, science and
technology, to enable them to feed themselves and their families;
7. Encourages
the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to continue to mainstream a gender
perspective in the fulfilment of his mandate, and encourages the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and all other United Nations
bodies and mechanisms that address the right to food and food insecurity to
integrate into and effectively implement a gender perspective and a human
rights perspective in their relevant policies, programmes and activities
regarding access to food;
16. Recognizes
that 80 per cent of people suffering from hunger live in rural areas, and 50
per cent are small-scale and traditional farmers, in particular women farmers,
and that these people are especially vulnerable to food insecurity, given the
increasing cost of various inputs and the fall in farm incomes; that access to
land, water, seeds and other natural resources is an increasing challenge for
poor producers; that sustainable and gender-sensitive agricultural policies are
important tools to achieve security and rural development; and that support by
States for small farmers, fishing communities and local enterprises is a key
element to food security and the provision of the right to food;
44. Acknowledges
the work being carried out by the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on
the right to food and, in that regard, takes note of the final study on the
promotion of human rights of the urban poor: strategies and best practices,[1][1] and the final study
on rural women and the right to food,[2][2] both prepared by
the Advisory Committee, and encourages States to take into account and
implement, where appropriate, the findings and recommendations contained in
both studies;
