Governments must be accountable for women’s right to food

According to the UN, 925 million people are chronically hungry, 60 percent of whom are women.

“Women’s right to food is still one of the most violated rights in the world, said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of the international human rights organization fighting for the right to food.  “What we often find, is that these violations are the result of structural violence against women and a lack of accountability on the part of governments, which have a direct obligation to protect its people against hunger.”

Due to FIAN interventions, in 2011, for the first time, the pertinent UN committee to monitor the fulfillment of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW, clearly acknowledged the right to food of women in their concluding recommendations to governments.

In a statement, presented by FIAN on behalf of Paraguayan Indigenous Women’s Organizations, to CEDAW, the women explain their situation, “Often we do not know what we will eat and feed our children the next day. When we eat we have to be limited to one snack per day, which only consists of rice or noodles. Lack of access and availability of adequate food, insufficient protein or vitamins affects our health, learning ability of our children and our capacity to work.”

In response to the women’s report, the CEDAW committee recommended the government of Paraguay strengthen its efforts to realize the right to adequate food for indigenous women in a participatory manner.

In a report on the right to adequate food of women in Nepal, FIAN Nepal highlighted severe shortcomings with regard to the implementation of this right, in a country where  almost a quarter of Nepal’s female population aged 15-49 years is malnourished.

According to the report, the Gandharva women in Surkhet district rely on collecting sand from the Jhupra stream banks, and crushing stone and loading the heavy stones into trucks that transport these to the cities, where the sand and stones are used as material for construction work, as their only means of income. For this work done from dawn to dusk, they hardly get paid 100 NRs (1.42 $) a day, below the minimum wage set by the local government.

In its concluding observations on Nepal, the committee expressed concerns about the living conditions of women living in poverty, in particular their lack of access to land, adequate food, safe drinking water. Regarding the high proportion of women working in the informal sector, CEDAW recommended the State of Nepal regulate the informal sector to ensure that women are not exploited. The committee also strongly recommended to provide for the right to adequate food in the new constitution.

“Monitoring and mechanisms to achieve state accountability must proceed with an understanding of the need for overcoming the specific barriers of discrimination and structural violence that women face when attempting to fulfill their human right to adequate food,” concludes Flavio Valente.