No right to food and nutrition without women’s rights

Despite calls for the inclusion of women and a gender perspective in food and nutrition security, the status of hunger and malnutrition of women and girls is still not improving. These groups are particularly susceptible to the dominant economic and development model, exploitative of people and natural resources, which coexists with patriarchal policies and practices. With the current trends in global governance weakening the ability of States to comply with their human rights obligations, women’s equal enjoyment of their rights remains unfulfilled and they are denied a life of dignity. 

The event will bring women’s rights activists from around the world together with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to discuss common strategies to hold duty bearers accountable. They will present an understanding of the right to food that does not simply reduce women to their role vis-à-vis their children, families and communities, but rather that sees the realization of women’s rights as an end in itself. 

Coming from Guatemala, India, Spain, Togo, and the USA, the participants will delve into the root causes of hunger and malnutrition, in a world where global and national policies seem to maintain poverty circles and increase inequalities. They will speak up for rural and urban women around the world that feel the impact of economic restructuring, migration, unregulated and unsustainable development, and climate change, with grave implications for their human right to adequate food and nutrition.

Organized by a long list of civil society groups and co-sponsored by several countries, the side event will be held between sessions of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) at the centre of global policy making, the Palais des Nations, on International Women’s Day, March 8.

For further information, see flyer.
To register, please contact fyfe[at]fian.org and visit the latest updates on the event page

Togo: State Must Respect Women’s Rights

FIAN International, a human rights organization working for the right to food, calls on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to recommend the Togo State to adopt all necessary measures to correct these practices and respect the women’s rights. In Togo, 4.8 percent of people suffer from acute malnutrition and, in some areas of the country, as many as 11.4 percent are severely food insecure.  “Many in Togo rely on agriculture as their main productive activity. Over the last several years, this reliance on land has been severely threatened by Togo’s phosphate mining industry,” said Claire Améyo Quenum, of the Togolese women’s rights NGO FLORAISON. “In the community of Gnita, agricultural land has been reduced from 3000 hectares in 1980 to less than 1200 hectares in 2007 due to land grabbing by the phosphate industry and soil degradation resulting from mining activities.”

As a result of prevailing traditional gender roles, lack of access to education for women, lack of access to healthcare and gender disparities with regard to access to land, property and other means of production, rural women are the main victims of food insecurity and land grabbing in Togo. This threat to women’s right to adequate food in Gnita often results in women’s desperate migration to nearby cities, such as Lomé, in search of a better life for their families.

“Once in the city, women’s right to adequate food continues to be threatened by their reliance on exploitative labor for a living, the disruption of their household structure and the illnesses to which they are exposed as a result of the dire conditions in which they live and work,” explained Quenum.

Quenum will take part in a 3-weeks tour of Europe calling attention to these violations of human rights in Togo. On October 4, in Geneva, she will make an oral statement before the UN CEDAW Committee regarding land grabbing by the phosphate industry and violations of women’s right to adequate food.

Based on information obtained from focus group discussions, interviews and surveys conducted with rural women from the village of Gnita, Togo, organisations working on behalf of local communities and women in Togo for over 15 years compiled a report discussing the obstacles Togolese rural women face in the realization of their right to adequate food.

In September, FIAN International together with Togo NGOs FLORAISON, GRADSE, and RAPDA-Togo, submitted the report to the UN CEDAW Committee, asking the Committee to consider its findings when reviewing Togo during its upcoming 53rd Session in October.

“FIAN International looks forward to the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations to the Togo State later this month and hopes the Committee takes into account our suggested recommendations in regards to women’s right to adequate food,” said Ana Maria Suarez Franco, permanent representative of FIAN in Geneva.

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Read the written submission to CEDAW

Read the oral statement to CEDAW (in French)

Contact:
Ana Maria Suarez-Franco
Suarez-Franco@fian.org
+41787962254