[APWW-Meet] Joint NGO Statement on Women, Poverty, Hunger

[<alisonaggarwal@hotmail.com>]

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Dear apww-meet members:

The following is a statement sent for your information. This is a
statement that came out of the 8th session of the UN Human Rights
Council.


Joint NGO Statement on Women, Poverty, Hunger
UN Human Rights Council - 8th session - Discussion on the Vienna
Declaration
1 6 June 2008

Contact: Elly Pradervand, WWSF - Women's World Summit Foundation
wwsf@wwsf.ch Phone number 022 738 66 19

This is a joint statement of the following NGOs: Women's World Summit
Foundation, International Federation of University Women, Pan Pacific
Association of South East and West, Pan Pacific & South East Asian
Women's Association, Zonta International, Inter-African Committee, The
World Movement of Mothers, Solar Cookers International, Worldwide
Organisation of Women


Mr. President,=20

Let me reiterate that WOMEN ARE THE KEY TO ENDING POVERTY AND HUNGER but
they need resources to help save especially the children from
malnutrition and starvation.

The UN has estimated that women produce 80% of the food consumed in
Africa, 65% in Asia and 45% in Latin America.  They shoulder most of the
domestic food processing and marketing tasks while also tending the home
fires and caring for the young, the sick and the old. One could reflect
on this traditional division of labour, but the crux of the problem is
that women hold the key to ending hunger in the world's poorest
countries where they sow, water, weed, harvest and process their food
crops by hand while their share of land resources and mechanized farm
implements remain negligible. By failing to support the local food
production entrusted to women in the developing world, the dependency of
marginal communities and many poor nations on food aid is reinforced.

Major UN conferences and summits regard the empowerment of women as an
effective way to combat poverty, hunger and disease. Rural women make up
a quarter of the world's population and produce more than half of the
world's food, yet they own less than 2 % of the land. UN
Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon recently called women the world's "most
significant yet largely untapped potential for development and peace".=20

Many international conferences over the past two decades have helped to
sensitize policy makers to the cost of gender discrimination and many
development actors have tirelessly drawn attention to the fact that the
African farmer is a woman and that greater support in her role to feed
the continent is called for. The way ahead is known though challenges
remain to increase literacy and to give the poor, especially rural
women, financial credit and other resources to push ahead. New data has
made it evident that investment in women's economic empowerment yield
striking improvements in nutrition, shelter, health care and schooling
for all. Armed with resources, knowledge and equal opportunities, women
could erase most of the world's hunger in our lifetime.

Finally, the General Assembly 2007 declared to annually observe 15
October as International Day of rural women, an idea first launched by
several NGOs at the Beijing Women's Conference as an essential Human
Rights objective and ever since a global campaign by the Women' World
Summit Foundation to remind rural women their basic human rights and to
claim them.  We hope that the movement for the UN International Day for
rural women will strengthen implementation of CEDAW Art. 14, the Vienna
Declaration, the Beijing Platform for Action and the UN Millennium
Development Goals.=20

Thank you Mr. President.


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