Women and the Right to Food

 

The second and at the same time the last Human Rights Forum of the Solidarité Committee took place on Wednesday 27 July, 2011 at the EuropeAid InfoPoint in Brussels. The aim was to tackle the advantages and disadvantages of women involvement in agriculture, the opportunities within and the existing arrangements on EU and global level.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Mr. Olivier De Schutter spoke about the situation in the world concerning hunger. Female workers in agriculture are 20% less efficient than their male counterparts due to their responsibilites as mother and their physical caracteristics. At the same time women can deal with the family budget better than men, so when the mother takes care of the family financials, children are more likely to dine better and more, go to school and therefore have a more promising future.

Ms. Chantal Symoens, Head of Sector Unit 'Rural Development, Food Security and Nutrition' in DEVCO spoke about the policies of the European community and what are the steps already taken and to be taken in the future to close the gender gap in agriculture.

 

Ms. Florence Kroff, Coordinator of Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) presented practical examples and case studies about women and the right to food. She emphasized the importance to fight against discrimination that stands on the way of people to feed themselves.

The Forum was very interesting and attracted a great number of guests. The subject is particularly interesting since food security is a priority area of the European Consensus on Development. Improving access to food is a key dimension of the EU’s fight against hunger.