HungerFREE at the UN

This week a crucial set of meetings is happening at the United Nations in New York. Leaders from across the world will discuss Africa’s development needs and progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

These goals, which the international community signed up to in 2000, commit the world to a set of development targets to be achieved by the year 2015.

These include ensuring every child has an education, that women don’t die in childbirth and that people don’t go hungry.

In a rich world where there is plenty of food for everyone, these goals are achievable.

Yet, half way through the MDG project, no country in sub-Saharan Africa is on track to meet them.

Women die due to pregnancy complications at a rate of one per minute, 99 per cent of them in the poor world. The number of hungry people in the world is going up, not down.

So a small team of ActionAiders is here to highlight issues of hunger and women’s rights, which we think are the key to meeting the MDGs.

We want world leaders to redouble their efforts on these issues and to be accountable for the promises they have already made.

Last week, we held a briefing for mission staff, from the offices that each government has here in New York. We presented our 10 Point Plan to End Hunger which includes our demands that governments must meet their citizens’ right to food.

It is the right of every human being to have enough to eat. It’s perhaps the most fundamental of all human rights, because without food none of us can live, function or thrive.

We want governments to promote, protect and uphold women’s right to land and natural resources. Women produce 80% of food in developing countries, but own just 1% of the land.

Not only is this fundamentally unjust, but without secure rights over land, women can’t access small loans to buy seeds and fertilisers.

Land confers social status too, so without it women have less independence and less of a say in decisions that affect their lives.

We also want rich countries to increase the aid they devote to agriculture. Only 3% is spent on agriculture (down from 17% in 1980) and most of this doesn’t reach those who need it most.

Investment in staple crops, such as rice and maize, which is produced mainly by women for household consumption, has halved. Money for loans for smallholder farmers, to buy seeds and fertilisers has also decreased sharply.

We urged the government representatives to use the opportunities surrounding the UN meetings to raise the profile of hunger and women’s rights issues.