UNFPA Says Women Should be Empowered to Reduce Hunger

UNITED NATIONS, New York - At a global meeting on food security, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) today urged the international community to take practical steps to reduce poverty and hunger. "As a first step, we need to empower the largest disenfranchised group on earth-and that is women," said Kunio Waki, Deputy Executive Director of the Fund, in a statement at the "World Food Summit: Five Years Later" which opened in Rome on 10 June.

"We will not reduce hunger unless we reduce poverty, and we will not reduce poverty unless we empower women and unleash their full potential as agents of social and economic progress and sustainable development," stated Mr. Waki, who spoke on behalf of Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA's Executive Director.

Unless women are placed at the centre of all efforts to reduce poverty and increase food security, he stated, vital opportunities to meet the world's present and future food needs will be missed.

Mr. Waki said that many small-scale food producers, and a disproportionate number of the world's poor, are women. Providing them with access to credit, markets and technical advice, as well as education and health care, and enforcing their right to own and inherit land could both improve the food supply of the world's poorest people and help them escape from poverty.

At the global conferences of the 1990s, governments and civil society organizations accepted that the empowerment of women is essential to sustainable development. But many women in developing countries still lack access to resources, essential services and the opportunity to make real choices despite these agreements, continued Mr. Waki.

"Women need support in both their productive and reproductive roles," he said. "As a matter of human rights and as a basis for their other choices, women need ready access to reproductive health information and services, including voluntary family planning."

The Deputy Executive Director pointed out that despite impressive fertility declines in most parts of the world, population continues to grow most rapidly in the poorest countries, which are those that are least able to afford basic services. In the next 50 years, the combined population of the least developed countries will triple, from 658 million to 1.8 billion people.

Current research suggests that providing food security for the 7.2 billion people expected to inhabit the earth in 2015 will require a reduction in poverty and gender inequality, a doubling of food production, an improvement in food distribution, and greater protection of the environment, he continued.

The poorest countries make direct demands on natural resources for survival, stated Mr. Waki. If they have no other choices, the damage to the environment can be profound and permanent.

Mr. Waki then announced UNFPA's support for the creation of an International Alliance against Hunger, which could foster positive action by governments, the UN system, non-governmental organizations, local communities and the private sector for food security.

Delegations from more than 180 countries are attending the summit. It aims to revive political will and mobilize political resources to reduce by half the number of hungry people to around 400 million by 2015, a pledge made at the World Food Summit in 1996.

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UNFPA is the world's largest multilateral provider of population assistance to developing countries. A primary aim of its support to Afghanistan and Afghan refugees in neighbouring countries is to increase women's access to reproductive health care and reduce the alarmingly high rate of maternal mortality, 1,700 deaths per 100,000 births.

UNFPA's The State of World Population 2001 report, "Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change", addressed food security issues in the context of gender inequality, unmet needs for reproductive health services, and continuing population growth in the world's poorest countries.

Contact Information:

William A. Ryan
Tel.: +66 2 288 2446
Email: ryanw@unfpa.org