DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES ALL DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS TO FULLY RECOGNIZE WOMEN'S CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

20 October 1998

Press Release
DSG/SM/23
OBV/70

DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES ALL DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS TO FULLY RECOGNIZE WOMEN'S CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

19981020 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Louise Fréchette Calls for Innovative Approaches To Development that Take Women's Contribution into Account

Following is the text of a statement made today at Headquarters by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette on the occasion of World Food Day:

Thank you, Mr. President, for that introduction. I am pleased to be here to address you on such an important occasion.

On the eve of the new millennium, we can look back at immense human accomplishments. Yet we have failed at the most basic level -- to ensure adequate food for all people.

Each year, World Food Day reminds us that the war against hunger is still being fought. More than 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger or malnutrition -- 200 million of them children. The short and long-term effects of hunger are well known. People's capacity for growth and daily activity are stunted. Hungry people cannot fulfil their human potential as individuals, nor as a society. This has devastating consequences both in economic and political terms.

More than half a century ago, the founders of the United Nations system recognized the need to unite in the war on want.

World Food Day marks the anniversary of the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) -– an entity of the United Nations system that came about in large part thanks to the foresight and initiative of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mrs. Roosevelt was instrumental in introducing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Frank McDougall, a key figure in the League of Nations. McDougall's writings on nutrition, agriculture and health drew the

world's attention to the fact that a large part of the world's population did not have enough to eat, nor the right sort of food.

It was McDougall's meetings with President Roosevelt which led ultimately to the establishment, at the Quebec Conference on 16 October 1945, of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Over these 53 years, the FAO has become the largest of the specialized agencies of the United Nations family, addressing issues related to agriculture and rural development. It has played a pivotal role in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. Advances in agricultural production systems, modern farming tools, and new practices in biotechnology have enabled world food production to increase at an unprecedented rate.

And yet in this fiftieth anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -– also a product of Mrs. Roosevelt's foresight -- the fundamental right to food for all remains elusive to millions of people.

This is not because of a shortage of food as such.

The world has enough food, as well as the technology and the know-how, to feed everyone. What is needed is a collective political will.

A first step is to recognize fully the critical contribution to food security that is made by women -- and to work to remove the obstacles they face in carrying out their role.

In the face of poverty, natural disasters and war, it is the resilience and ingenuity of women that enables families and communities to survive. It is hard to do justice to the daily struggle of rural women and the multitude of obstacles and discriminatory practices they face in accomplishing their daily workload.

What is even harder to convey is the opportunities lost for growth and development for many women, their families and society. Agricultural development policies still do not reflect the needs of women adequately. Even when they do so on paper, they are often not translated into practice.

I therefore congratulate Director-General Diouf on his decision to dedicate this year's World Food Day to "the women who feed the world".

The theme provides us all with an excellent opportunity to pay tribute to the multiple roles and responsibilities women have in agriculture and in the entire food chain.

Since it was founded, the United Nations has worked towards the eradication of hunger, malnutrition and poverty. It has recognized women not

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only as victims of the vicious circle of hunger and poverty, but also as indispensable partners in the work to break that circle.

The Charter of the United Nations was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. The United Nations system has since helped create internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide. It has worked to secure women's legal equality. In many countries, law, custom and land rights constitute a major obstacle to women’s ability to play their part as breadwinners.

The United Nation's Decade for women from 1976 to 1985 helped to improve the international community's understanding of the role of rural women. The Decade recognized women as essential contributors to the entire food chain. It produced a momentum towards the General Assembly's adoption of a landmark treaty in women's rights: the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Convention constitutes an international bill of human rights for women. Article 14 calls upon State Parties to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas in order to ensure that they participate in and benefit from development.

The post-cold war era has allowed the United Nations to redouble its efforts for the advancement of rural women. United Nations conferences and summits have provided a vehicle for the international community to address the issue across a broad and interlocking spectrum of concerns and issues.

Two stand out as particularly relevant to us today: the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and the World Food Summit in Rome the following year.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called upon Governments to enhance rural women's income-generating potential by facilitating their equal access to and control over productive resources, development programmes and cooperative structures.

At Beijing, Governments agreed to undertake legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies. Although some progress has been made, more efforts are needed in this direction. I take this opportunity to remind Governments of their commitments.

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The Rome Summit was the culmination of international efforts for food security and rural women. The Summit Plan of Action calls for the promotion of women's full and equal participation in the economy and for gender-sensitive legislation giving women secure and equal access to resources such as credit, land and water.

These world conferences gave participants hope and strength to return home in the knowledge that they were part of a global social movement. A coordinated follow-up is of crucial importance.

Half a century of experience has taught the United Nations that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and full empowerment, of women.

Today, I would like to pay tribute to the FAO, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development for their tireless efforts to bring issues of concern to rural women on to the international policy agenda.

And I call on all development partners, governmental and non- governmental, to recognize fully the crucial contribution that women make and can make to agricultural production and food security -- and to adopt innovative approaches to development and agricultural development that take that contribution fully into account. I appeal to you all to renew your commitment to the goal of "food for all".

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