Hunger, malnutrition and poverty breed disabilities, and at the same time disability is a cause of poverty, malnutrition and hunger. Some examples:

• According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are 386 million disabled people of working age worldwide. Many of the disabled can and want to work, yet they are frequently excluded. Unemployment among disabled people is far higher than for the population in general;

• 70-80% of the disabled in the Asia and Pacific Region are farmers, rural workers or disabled soldiers, who have returned to the countryside. One country that has been particularly hard hit by disability is Cambodia, where 1.4 million out of a population of eight million have been disabled as a result of poverty, war and human rights abuses;

• Armed conflict, landmines and diseases such as meningitis are among the major causes of disability throughout the world. In Afghanistan some 800,000 people -- about 4 percent of the population -- are disabled largely because of the combined effects of war and poverty;

• Between 250,000 and 500,000 children go blind every year from lack of vitamin A;

• There are over 16 million mentally handicapped and nearly 50 million people with some lesser degree of brain damage caused by Iodine Deficiency Disorders;

• More than half of all pregnant women in the world are anaemic, of whom 90 percent live in developing countries.

December 3 is the International Day of Disabled People. FAO is devoting special attention to the rural disabled in Asia and the Pacific, as a contribution to The Decade for Disabled People in Asia and Pacific (1993-2002).

FAO's Rural Development Division runs a programme aimed at improving the living conditions of the rural disabled, focusing on strengthening the income generation capacities of rural people with disabilities. The programme's slogan is: "Disabled farmers are farmers". The programme is now being extended to Africa.