WUNRN
FIAN International - For the Right
to Adequate Food
FIAN International’s
Submission on Child, Early and Forced Marriage
To the Office of the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Preparation of its Report to the
Human Rights Council at its 26th Session in June 2014 Pursuant to HRC Resolution A/HRC/RES/24/23
I. Introduction
FIAN International
welcomes the UN Human Rights Council’s adoption of Resolution 24/23 requesting
the OHCHR to prepare a report on the subject of child, early and forced
marriage as well as the OHCHR’s call for civil society submissions for the
preparation of this report. This contribution seeks to provide information
about the links between child, early and forced marriage, children’s rights,
women’s rights throughout the lifespan and the realization of the right to
adequate food and nutrition for all. We hope that the OHCHR will consider the
following issues and recommendations during the preparation of its report on
the subject. The information contained in this submission is based, inter alia, on information obtained by FIAN
through exchanges with affected communities during the course of our work,
especially during the process of documenting cases of violations of the right
to adequate food and nutrition and related rights, elaborating case strategies,
and conducting workshops and seminars at the national, regional, and
international levels, in which affected communities and experts from different
regions of the world participated.1
II. Our holistic
understanding of the right to adequate food and nutrition
We, at FIAN, understand
the human right to adequate food and nutrition as a comprehensive concept
intrinsically linked to the full realization of women’s rights, and within the
conceptual framework of food sovereignty. As a result, and in line with the
Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to
Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security, adopted by the FAO in
2004, States should be held accountable to respect, protect, and fulfil the
right to adequate food and nutrition in an integrated manner by ensuring that
all structural causes of hunger and malnutrition are addressed all along the
food chain and related governance and policy processes – from access, control,
management and ownership of land, seeds, forests and water bodies, to food
processing, marketing and promotion, protection in the workplace, and to decent
income and consumption patterns, up until the very moment in which food is
effectively consumed as a needed element for nutrition and health, individually
or in community with others across their respective life spans. Understanding
that this whole process is mediated by gender and powerbiased social structures
leads us to the realization that women’s rights should be considered all along
the food chain and throughout the lifespan. Ignoring the holistic reality of
the human right to adequate food and nutrition, as part and as result of social
processes, leads to the fragmented understanding of food and nutrition and
creates gaps in human rights promotion and protection.
III. Linking child,
early and forced marriage, children’s rights, women’s rights and the right to
adequate food and nutrition
Understanding and addressing the links between women’s rights, children’s rights and the human right to adequate food and nutrition is fundamental for the eradication of hunger and malnutrition. Central to the realization of women’s rights is the understanding of the role of harmful acts and practices committed against women and girls, when they are deprived of the totality of their rights and their freedom to choose how to live their lives, which in most instances act as a barrier to the realization of women’s human right to adequate food and nutrition.2 Child, early and forced marriages are harmful practices and a violation of
1 More information
on this topic and the links between women’s rights and the right to adequate
food and nutrition can be found in Anne C. Bellows, Flavio L.S. Valente, and
Stefanie Lemke. (Eds.) Gender,
Nutrition and the Human Right to Adequate Food: towards an inclusive framework. New York: Taylor &
Francis/Routledge. (Expected date of publication: 2014).
2 For a
concrete example of the links between violations of the right to adequate food
and structural violence, see FIAN International, Alternative written
report submitted on behalf of rural women in Gnita, Togo and Togo-based NGOs,
FLORAISON, GRADSE and RAPDA-Togo, with the support of FIAN International,
to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, during its 53rd Session,
October 2012, accessed January 26, 2013, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/FIAN_JointNGOs_ForTheSession_E.pdf.
human rights with
significant intergenerational implications for the right to adequate food and
nutrition of the girl, the woman, her children and her community. The
implications for the health and nutritional status, and thus for the
realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition, of the girl who is
subjected to child, early and forced marriage are dire. Child, early and forced
marriage results in the deprivation of the human rights (e.g. their right to
education, reproductive rights, etc.) of the girls and young women who are
victims to these violations, and is linked to early and adolescent pregnancy,
possibly associated with nutritional deprivation and stunting, risk of death,
distancing from family, workload, and imposed obligations of child care and
breastfeeding. Early or adolescent pregnancy places a severe burden on the
nutritional well-being, growth, and development of the still growing girl, even
if provided with an adequate diet because these have to compete with the
nutritional demands of bearing a child. This scenario results in young women
and girls who become pregnant at an early age, many of them already stunted, to
become chronically undernourished, further stunted and anemic.3 Furthermore, the risk of maternal
malnutrition and mortality in these young women is increased by three to four
times in comparison to the risk for an adult woman.4 In fact, complications from
pregnancy and childbirth are among the most important causes of death for girls
aged 15-19 in low- and middle-income countries.5 Furthermore, pregnant adolescents are more likely
than adults to have unsafe abortions, which contribute not only to lasting
health problems, but also maternal deaths.6
For the child who is born
as a result of a child, early and forced marriage and thus, many times, as a
result of an early pregnancy, the realization of his or her right to adequate
food and nutrition, and thus of other human rights, is severely impaired for
his or her lifetime.7
The infant mortality
and malnutrition rates associated with adolescent pregnancies are higher than
those of adult pregnancies.8 Furthermore,
adolescent mothers have a higher risk of having low birth weight babies.9 Low birth weight babies have a
much higher risk of dying before reaching age 5, of developing more severe
malnutrition, specially stunting10,
and of developing chronic degenerative diseases in adult age11. Low birth weight, wasting,
stunting, and child malnutrition, has the further consequence of impaired
cognitive development and malnutrition, including under-nutrition and
obesity, in adulthood.12
IV. Analysis and
recommendations
3 See United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Child under nutrition in India: a Gender issue, 2009, accessed
February 3, 2013, http://www.unicef.org/india/nutrition_5901.htm.
4 See United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), State of the World Children – 2011, accessed February
3, 2013, http://www.unicef.org/media/files/SOWC_2011_Main_Report_EN_02092011.pdf,
22.
5 See World
Health Organization (WHO). Women’s health fact sheet, accessed January
13, 2013, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs334/en/.
6 See World
Health Organization (WHO). Women’s health fact sheet, accessed January
13, 2013, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs334/en/.
7 For a
specific country example of the impact of child, early and forced marriage on
women’s human rights throughout the life span, including the right to health
and education, see Plan Nepal, Save the Children, and World Vision
International, Child
Marriage in Nepal – Research Report, 2012, accessed December 15, 2013, https://217.86.242.33/exchange/cordova/Posteingang/WG:%20OHCHR%20Call%20for%20Submission%20on%20child,%20early%20and%20forced%20marriage%20-%20Deadline%2015%20Dec%202013.EML/Child%20Marriage%20in%20Nepal-%20Report.pdf/C58EA28C-18C0-4a97-9AF2-
036E93DDAFB3/Child%20Marriage%20in%20Nepal-%20Report.pdf?attach=1.
8 See United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), State of the World Children – 2011, accessed February
3, 2013, http://www.unicef.org/media/files/SOWC_2011_Main_Report_EN_02092011.pdf,
22.
9 See World
Health Organization (WHO). Adolescent pregnancy fact sheet, accessed January
13, 2013, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs364/en/.
10 Stunting,
or low height for age, is usually caused by continued insufficient nutrient
intake and frequent infections, higher prevalence below age 2. Wasting, or low
weight for height, is a strong predictor of infant or child mortality, and is
usually associated with acute lack of adequate nutrient intake and disease. For
more information, see United Nations Chi dren’s Fund (UNICEF), Progress for
Children: A World Fit for Children Statistical Review, accessed February
5, 2013, http://www.unicef.org/progressforchildren/2007n6/index_41505.htm.
11 See
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), State of the World Children – 2011, accessed December
12, 2013, http://www.unicef.org/progressforchildren/2006n4/index_lowbirthweight.html.
12 See
United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), Sixth report on the
world nutrition situation, accessed December 12, 2013, http://www.unscn.org/files/Publications/RWNS6/html/.
Despite all of the
evidence linking malnutrition to a low socio-economic status of women13, limited nutrition interventions
that neglect structural causes continue to be a priority. For example, a number
of interventions attempt – in a reductionist way – to improve adolescent girls’
nutrition, maternal nutrition during pregnancy and lactation, breastfeeding,
and children’s nutrition during the first two years of life, without due
attention to the human rights violations committed against these girls and
young women throughout their lives, including child, early and forced marriage.
There is a strong relationship among women’s nutrition and the
intergenerational cycle of growth failure14,
which from a human rights perspective, allows us to state that the main causes
of the failure of public policies and programs to reduce child malnutrition
primarily revolve around the lack of attention to the women’s rights dimension
in the human right to adequate food and nutrition. The concentration of public
programs on “after the fact” interventions such as nutrition rehabilitation,
exclusive breastfeeding, and supplementary feeding, even if fundamental for the
child, places the center of the responsibility for this on the household and on
the mothers, and ignores the role of governments as duty-bearers, with the
obligation to respect, protect, promote, facilitate and provide the right to
adequate food and women´s rights throughout the life cycle. To aggravate the
situation, policies tend to make women invisible, in particular when these
ignore the diversity of women’s roles throughout their life spans and instead
reduce them to that of motherhood. Women are, in many official documents,
viewed as “future mothers” from conception or birth onwards, and are often not
taken into account in policies and programs in other phases of life or if they
decide not to become mothers. Insufficient attention is given to women’s
nutritional status prior to conception and to the social conditions and role of
adolescent pregnancy, which is often a result of child, early and forced
marriage. This lack of public policy attention to the nutritional well-being of
women and adolescent girls throughout their life spans results in the violation
of their human rights, including the human right to adequate food and
nutrition of women.
Policies and
interventions aimed at addressing malnutrition need to place the emphasis on
guaranteeing the needed social and legal protection against discrimination of
women and girls, in particular against child, early and forced marriage.
Policies need to capture the significant role that women’s good nutritional
status, prior to/and independently of becoming a mother, has for the potential future
offspring. Instead of solely taking on a medical sector approach and within
that a clear prioritization for the curative approach that places the emphasis
on disease, death, provision of health services, a more holistic approach
should be prioritized – one that is more conducive to the promotion of health
and prevention of malnutrition and that fosters policies that place the focus
on the underlying structural causes, and on the role of the realization of
women’s and girls’ human rights throughout the lifespan.
The promotion of girls’
and women’s overall rights across their life spans, which, among others,
include access to self-determination and autonomy, education, productive
resources, jobs, income, sexual and reproductive rights, adequate preventive
and curative health care, fair and unbiased partnerships, reproductive-related
information and services, not only enables women and girls to freely decide
whether and when to become mothers, but it also has a positive impact on their
overall nutritional status, their pregnancy outcomes and for their babies’
survival and health and that of their entire communities for present and future
generations.15
13 For
example, see The Guardian, Land rights for women can help ease India’s child
malnutrition crisis,
accessed December 12, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/jan/20/land-rights-india-women-ease-malnutrition.
14 R.
Shrimpton, “Maternal nutrition and the intergeneration cycle of growth
failure,” in 6th
Report on World Nutrition Situation, UNSCN, Geneva (2010), 62-75.
15 For more
information on the links between women’s rights and the right to adequate food
and nutrition, please see De Schutter, Olivier. Women’s Rights and
the Right to Food. Report
presented at the 22nd Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
[A/HRC/22/50], 2012. Accessed December 15, 2013. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/189/49/PDF/G1218949.pdf?OpenElement.