Dear Friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to forward to you the following press release from the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) International.
Asian Human Rights Commission
Hong Kong
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A Press Release from the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) International forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
Heidelberg (17 December 2009) — FIAN International welcomes the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which is to be celebrated tomorrow. The current global food crisis affects women disproportionately. Where the human right to food is violated or threatened, women and girls are often specifically or more severely affected. Limited access to and control over resources, lower salaries, insecure and unstable labour conditions, gender biased labour markets, discrimination in laws, regulations and programmes, limited enjoyment of the right to education, inadequate public health care, imposed early marriage and pregnancy, and exclusion from decision making processes impair the right to adequate food for women throughout the world. In addition, intra household food discrimination prevails in many regions of the world.
“Women and children are particularly vulnerable to the nutritional effects of high food prices, as they are more likely to suffer from micronutrient deficiencies when driven to consume less diversified diets. The specific needs of women who require special protection are often neglected, e.g. through lack of protection of pregnant workers, insufficient maternity leave or discrimination in social transfer programmes, says Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN International.
Women are responsible for more than 50 % of household production of food, but only own 2 % of the land worldwide. In Kenya, for example, 98% of the women are working fulltime in the agricultural sector, but less than 5% do own land. Women’s lack of access to land underpins their situation of hunger.
Existing human rights instruments, which a majority of nations have signed, place emphasis on access to land and other natural resources as a prerequisite to achieving the right to food. CEDAW deals comprehensively with womens rights and creates binding legal obligations to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay, a policy of eliminating discrimination against women. The Convention refers to the nutrition dimension of the right to food of women and to their equal access to land, credit, income and social security or safety nets, all of them essential elements for the full realization of the right to food.
The establishment of CEDAW came along with the UN Decade for Women, where through the worldwide systematic investigation and documentation of the impact of power and violence mechanisms on and within gender relations an enormous knowledge base was created, that had not existed up to then, says Gertrude Klaffenböck, Section Co-ordinator of FIAN Austria. States regularly have to report and explain themselves before the CEDAW Committee on the measures they take to face womens discrimination in their countries. The CEDAW furthermore has a strong complaints mechanism, provided in the Optional Protocol to the Convention, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2009: This complaints mechanism procures access to justice for women where national governments have failed to do so, explains Klaffenböck.
“In this historic momentum when the number of people who suffer hunger and undernutrition is surpassing one billion, the majority among them women and girls, the action of the CEDAW to promote the realization of the right to food of women at national level and in the international community is very relevant to prevent that hunger continues to increase, states Ana-María Suarez Franco, Coordinator of the Justiciability Program at FIAN International. In this regard, FIAN recommends that the CEDAW adopts a General Recommendation on the Right to Food, tackling the issue in a comprehensive manner and including the different dimensions of this right, concludes Suarez-Franco.
Background information:
CEDAW is the international human rights treaty that is exclusively devoted to gender equality. It was adopted on 18 December 1979 by the UN General Assembly, and defines discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. In 2009, CEDAW is also celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Optional Protocol to the Convention , which empowers the CEDAW Committee to hear complaints of rights violations brought by individuals. To date, 186 countries have ratified the Convention and 98 of these countries have ratified the Optional Protocol.
For more information, please contact Ana-María Suarez Franco at FIAN: +49 6221 65300 42
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