In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 50 million people still do not have access to adequate food, and hunger is increasing rapidly due to the food prices crisis. A call for action from national governments and international bodies is urgently needed.

The current food crisis is the result of the failure of macroeconomic and structural policies implemented during the past 30 years under the leadership of the international financial institutions (IMF, the World Bank, IDB and the WTO). Climate change and protectionist factors have also had a huge impact.

However, Beyond this, one of the major problems is the lack of access to land and property, and consequently to food, among women. This is particularly true in the case of rural and indigenous women and female heads of household.

This situation has been made worse through the implementation of policies that underestimate and ignore the role and contribution of rural and indigenous women in food production, as well as through development strategies that do not have a gender approach. 

Who we are

ActionAid has joined with peasant, feminist, rural and indigenous organizations and other networks of women concerned about reducing poverty and achieving gender equity.

Our Americas region has partnered up with VIA Campesina women, the Guatemala HungerFREE campaign, IFSN networks, and other national women’s groups under the Muheres Sin Hambre (Women without hunger/ Women for a HungerFREE world) banner.

Together, across 6 countries (Peru, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, and Nicaragua) we are making a variety of demands on access to land, women’s full citizeinship and identity cards, food sovereignty, water, urban agriculture.

What do we want?

That the right to food of rural women is met through policies and programs that:

• Assure that more land (and related resources) are held by women; 
• Women acquire permanent rights to land (and resources), as citizens, through the elimination of discriminatory laws and policies and/or enforcement of legislation on equal treatment for women; 
• The political power of rural women will be strengthened through alliances and solidarity movements and effective steps to form a political group that fights for women's rights to land and natural resources;
• That governments protect and defend the rights of women and have regulatory frameworks against the concentration of land in the hands of an elite and corporations.

© Leo Liberman