Transcript Right to Food and the Importance of Investing in Smallholder Agriculture 30 November 2011 Ruchi Tripathi Head of Right to Food ActionAid International.

Right to Food and the Importance of
Investing in Smallholder Agriculture
30 November 2011
Ruchi Tripathi
Head of Right to Food
ActionAid International
Human Rights Based Approach to
Fighting Poverty and Hunger
 What is the right to food?
 Who are the rights holders?
 How do we realise the right to food?
Right to Food
• Recognised in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
(Article 25) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights (Article 11)
• “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman
and child, alone and in community with others, has physical and
economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its
procurement” (General Comment 12, 1999, para 6).
• Governments have the responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil
the right to food
• Food security is built on three pillars: availability, access,
adequacy
Increased hunger
• 925 million people are still estimated to be
undernourished in 2010, representing almost 16 percent
of the population of developing countries. (FAO)
• This indicates deeper structural problem that gravely
threatens the ability to achieve internationally agreed
goals on hunger reduction
• 65% of the world's hungry live in only seven countries:
India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.
(Source: FAO news release, 2010)
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Empowerment
Addressing immediate needs
Understanding the political context and marginalization process
Raising self and critical awareness
Analyzing and prioritizing problems & possible livelihood strategies
Mobilizing resources for collective action
Community-led implementation of alternative livelihood strategies, monitoring and evaluation
Identifying the
rights holders:
who are the hungry
and why are they
hungry at
individual,
household and
community level
Identifying the
obstacles to
intra-household
food security:
food availability,
access and
adequacy
Solidarity
 Strengthening the civil society
 Building alliances and federations
 Networking with other rights holders and civil society allies
Identifying the
available
livelihood assets:
human, natural,
physical, economic,
political, social
Identifying
potential
livelihood
strategies:
agricultural
intensification,
migration,
livelihood
diversification
Campaigning
 Influencing duty bearers for policies, processes and
institutions in support of the right to food
 Negotiating and asserting rights
Investing in Women Smallholders
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Gender gap in agriculture
Multiple constraints and responsibilities of women smallholders
What women farmers want
Addressing gender specific constraints and empower women smallholders
Need for an integrated approach
Gender gap in agriculture
 Women smallholders comprise an average of 43 percent of
the agricultural labour force of developing countries. The
female share of the agricultural labour force ranges from
about 20 percent in Latin America to almost 50 percent in
Eastern and Southeastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa
 Despite this rural women rarely receive any attention in
agricultural policies, programmes and budget allocations.
 Women own only 1% of the land in Africa; receive only 7% of
extension services and less than 10% of all agricultural
credit. If women farmers in Africa had the same access to
land as men, they would increase their farm productivity by
up to 20%. (ILO 2009)
 Closing the gender gap in agriculture could reduce the
number of hungry people in the world by 12-17 % thereby
reducing the number of hungry by at least 100 million
people (FAO 2011)
Multiple constraints and responsibilities
of women smallholders
 Firstly women tend to be invisible to policy makers, which is
born out of a lack of recognition of their role as ‘productive’
farmers, and a lack of recognition of their unpaid farm work
 In addition, they bear a disproportionate burden of care and
reproductive roles within the family and community.
 They are also deprived of access to markets, key assets, and
inputs, and are frequently excluded from decision-making.
 Women are also disproportionately impacted by poverty
and hunger - including having lower access to education and
health care facilities compared to men.
Recommendations for Parliamentarians
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What women farmers want
Addressing gender specific constraints and empower women smallholders
Need for an integrated approach
Regional initiatives and global food governance
Support for women smallholders should
include1
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Securing poor women farmers’ access to and control
over land
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Gender appropriate farming inputs
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Access to financial services including social transfers
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Access to clean and stable source of water
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Appropriate extension services and training
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Appropriate research and technology
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Appropriate marketing facilities
1
Adapted from ActionAid. 2011. What Women Farmers Need: A blueprint for action. Johannesburg: ActionAid.
Available at: http://www.actionaid.org/publications/what-women-farmers-need-blueprint-action
Strategies to address gender specific
constraints and empower women smallholders2
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Active participation of women in collective action (and
solidarity with women who cant join the groups)
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Improved access to and management of productive
resources (individual and collective) for women
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Enhanced contributions by women to household
revenues (and control over these resources)
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Optimised time and resources spent in care and
reproductive activities by women – policies and
interventions must recognise women’s paid and unpaid
work, including unpaid care work
2
Adapted from ActionAid. Forthcoming. The Long Road from Household Food Security to Women's Empowerment Signposts from Bangladesh and The Gambia. Johannesburg: ActionAid.
Need for an integrated approach
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An integrated and holistic approach should:
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Recognise women as both farmers and food
producers
Recognise their productive and reproductive
roles.
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Food security programmes that address these
separately fail to see the linkages and trade-offs that
come with only seeing women as farmers or only as
carers/food providers.
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Such approach can help to empower women, giving
them more control over their time and resources and
allowing them to challenge public policies.
Regional and Global Agendas
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Africa: Comprehensive African Agricultural
Development Programme (CAADP) policies and
investment plans need to advance a clear vision for
addressing the needs of women and smallholders
Asia: Governments must build better price shock
absorbers and build resilience to emergencies
through national and regional food reserves –
SAARC Food Bank
Global: Governments must support policy
recommendations adopted by the Committee on
World Food Security (CFS) with strong moral
authority and clear political mandates, and ensure
that gender is mainstreamed in all their activities,
policy discussions and decisions.