Food security and global security - IEEE

María del Mar Hidalgo GarcíaThe role of women in food securityand fertilisers. Furthermore, women have more limited access to training,information, public services, social protection and markets.Article 14 of the «The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination against Women» specifically highlights States’ obligationsto eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas. Yet, despite suchcommitments, governments are not responding with sufficient urgency in orderto address the needs and priorities of rural women.According to the FAO, if women had the same opportunities in terms of accessto productive resources (seeds, fertilisers, tools, loans, etc.) as men, theycould increase their yields by 20-30%. This would mean an increase in theproduction of agro-food of between 2.5 and 4%, thus reducing the number ofpeople affected by malnutrition by around 12-17%.Such telling statistics bring into stark relief the importance of the gender issuein achieving the objectives of all the Millennium Goals. Urgent measures mustbe taken in order to empower rural women in all aspects and from a holisticviewpoint, including the implementation of sustainable rural developmentpolicies on the part of governments.84Achieving the Millennium Goals will depend on the progress made in termsof improving agricultural and rural development. The poorest populations are,precisely, small farmers primarily from sub-Saharan Africa and agriculturalworkers in South-East Asia. And all improvements in rural areas are dependentupon acknowledging the different roles played by men and women.■■THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL AND POLITICAL FRAMEWORKIn order to ensure that rural women achieve equal rights as well as greaterparticipation and leadership in economic issues, a series of gender-relatedmeasures needs to be established within the rural ambit in legal, political andinstitutional terms.In recent years, the situation of rural women and the role they play has been thefocus of attention in treaties concerning human rights. Yet the «Convention onthe Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women» (6) is the onlyinternational human rights treaty which dedicates an article to the situationof rural women. The article calls on all State Parties to adopt appropriatemeasures to eliminate discrimination against rural women in a number ofareas. Article 14 of the Convention thus states:(6)The CEDAW came into force on 3 September 1981 following its ratification by 20countries.