FAO offers assistance to member countries for the formulation of national policy in such varied fields as development, agriculture, livestock production, fisheries, natural resource management, and food and nutrition policies.
FAO interventions include the following:
the provision of fora for the establishment of international standards and agreements such as the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, the World Food Summit, the negotiations on plant genetic resources, and, with the help of CODEX, the establishment of food quality and safety standards;
international databases useful for policy formulation;
building awareness on specific policy issues and experiences through FAO publications, meetings, training activities and the like;
advisory services for direct assistance at country level in policy formulation and capacity-building.
FAO also offers support in the following areas:
promotion of dialogue in the area of national policy and capacity building for policy formulation.
Direct FAO policy assistance for member countries includes:
capacity building.
FAO's experience has shown that land is a basic source of wealth, social status, power and well being. Land is also a major source of employment in rural areas, especially for women. Land is also of great cultural, religious and legal significance due to the correlation in many societies between personal decision-making powers and land wealth. Integration and its opposite, social exclusion, are thus closely bound up with personal status where land rights are concerned.
Land rights for rural women tend to be governed largely by the following three major items:
the right to transfer land.
In FAO's view, the major elements for the implementation of CEDAW are:
land access rights accompanied by equitable access to transport, credits and marketing.
FAO also advises on the following:
a review of systems of property rights allocation and guarantees.
Any correct implementation of CEDAW needs to be constantly aware of the major constraints to development and gender inequality outlined below:
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Some rural factors that may contribute to poverty among rural women and their families
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Problems in obtaining adequate urban housing
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Source: FAO 1997. "Gender: the Key to Sustainability and Food Security" FAO Sustainable Development Division, Rome, Italy www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/SUSDEV/Wpdirect/Wpdoe002.htm
FAO has taken note that countries which are politically and financially committed to ensuring gender equality in property rights are also those which have developed faster, and achieved greater food security and higher social and health standards. FAO also insists on the need to recognise and understand those social and cultural practices and values and changing socio-economic patterns that act to limit women's access to land. FAO therefore advises including the following components in order to achieve gender equality:
1. Legal frameworks explicitly stipulating gender equality in private property rights. These frameworks must include and highlight customary or traditional development systems for greater effectiveness.
2. Full participation of local stakeholders (essential to programme success and without which local people are reluctant to cooperate).
3. Locally applied programmes must consider the problems posed by barriers to the participation of specific groups such as women.
4. Gender-disaggregated data, which helps to determine the number of women beneficiaries of agrarian or legislative reform programmes.
5. Equal access to other forms of ownership such as cooperatives or marketing associations. Facilitating women's access to these groups on an equal footing with men means acknowledging women's proficiency in management and applying this to other economic activities.
6. The utilisation of gender-disaggregated data in agrarian reform programmes. Countries commissioning studies on social, juridical or economic programmes should ensure that these studies are gender sensitive.
7. A gender awareness-building programme designed to persuade men and women of the importance of ensuring gender equality.
FAO's Gender and Development Plan of Action (2002-2007) follows on the heels of earlier plans. It provides a frame of reference for the follow-up to the Beijing Declaration and to Article 14 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and to the document entitled "Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century".
The Gender and Development Plan of Action reiterates the objectives set forth in the Rome Declaration of the World Food Summit and the Plan of Action of The World Food Summit adopted in 1996. It includes the Consultation on Rural Women organised by FAO in 1999 in Rome entitled: "Gender Equality and Food Security, the Role of Information".[2]
The Plan of Action addresses the imperative in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, "To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable".
The objective of the Plan of Action is to eliminate all barriers to equal and active participation by men and women in agricultural activities and rural development, and to an equal share in the outputs of this participation. The Plan of Action rightly reminds us that the establishment of a partnership based on gender equality is an essential a priori element to the establishment of people-centred sustainable rural and agricultural development.
With the Plan of Action FAO is helping member countries achieve three objectives:
access for all at all times to sufficient, safe and nutritionally adequate food;
the achievement of sustainable rural development and agriculture that can contribute to the economic and social progress and well-being of all;
the conservation, enhancement and sustainable use of natural resources useful for food and agriculture.
Please consult Annex 2 for the specific objectives of the Plan of Action and the many actions undertaken by FAO.
The World Food Summit: five years later (2002) reaffirms the same commitment on food security taken by the Declaration of Rome at the World Food Summit (WFS) in November 1996, to eradicate hunger in all countries, with an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their level no later than 2015.
This summit recognises the many facets of food security, especially its links with the "full and equal economic participation of women".
Objective 1.3 is, among other commitments, the one devoted to gender equality and the empowerment of women. Governments pledge to:
a. support and implement commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995, that a gender perspective is mainstreamed in all policies;
b. promote women's full and equal participation in the economy, and for this purpose introduce and enforce gender-sensitive legislation providing women with secure and equal access to and control over productive resources including credit, land and water;
c. ensure that institutions provide equal access to women;
d. provide equal gender opportunities for education and training in food production, processing and marketing;
e. tailor extension and technical services to women producers and increase the number of women advisors and agents;
f. improve the collection, dissemination and use of gender-disaggregated data in agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development;
g. focus research efforts on the division of labour and on income access and control within the household;
h. gather information on women's traditional knowledge and skills in agriculture, fisheries, forestry and natural resources management.
These pledges are reaffirmed in a more general way in the WFS: five years later, but the message is the same:
"We (Heads of State and Government) reaffirm the need to assure gender equality and to support empowerment of women. We recognize and value the continuing and vital role of women in agriculture, nutrition and food security and the need to integrate a gender perspective in all aspects of food security; and we recognize the need to adopt measures to ensure that the work of rural women is recognized and valued in order to enhance their economic security, and their access to and control over resources and credit schemes, services and benefits".
The commitments of the WFS and the WFS: five years later dovetail perfectly with the objectives of CEDAW and comprise a valuable contribution to the implementation and reinforcement of this Convention.
Some progress has been made despite the enormous problems of achieving gender parity. The adherence of 177 States Parties to the Convention is positive evidence of the political will to improve the situation of discrimination against women, and especially the least privileged among them: rural women.
Culture, custom and traditional law do sometimes act to impede this progress, but FAO, thanks to its great experience in this field, can work together with the protagonists of sustainable development, offering valuable assistance to confront, tackle and resolve problems as they arise.
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