Women, Food, Land: Exploring Rule of Law Linkages Using Law to Strengthen Food Security and Land Rights for Women
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WOMEN, FOOD, LAND: EXPLORING RULE OF LAW LINKAGES USING LAW TO STRENGTHEN FOOD SECURITY AND LAND RIGHTS FOR WOMEN International Development Law Organization WOMEN, FOOD, LAND: EXPLORING RULE OF LAW LINKAGES The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) is an intergovernmental organization devoted to empowering people and enabling governments to reform laws and strengthen institutions to promote peace, justice, sustainable development and economic opportunity. Front cover image: Flickr_Kate Holt/Australia Aid 02 IDLO TABLE OF CONTENTS › Acronyms 03 2.3 Interaction between formal and › Executive Summary 05 informal legal systems 22 2.4 Barriers to accessing justice 23 Part 1 INTRODUCTION Part 3 1.1 The 2030 agenda for Sustainable ENTRY POINTS FOR PROGRAMMING Development 08 ON FOOD SECURITY AND EQUAL LAND RIGHTS 1.2 Women, food and land – exploring concepts and linkages 10 3.1 Ensure participation – an overarching principle 28 (1) Food security and the right to adequate food 10 3.2 Collect and share relevant data to (2) Land rights and access to inform, monitor and assess 30 productive natural resources 12 (3) Gender equality 13 3.3 Coordinate legal, policy and (4) Gender equality and food security 14 budgetary measures 32 (5) Rule of law and food security 16 3.4 Implement gender-sensitive and responsive labor, social security, agricultural and land administration systems 34 Part 2 3.5 Improve women’s access to justice 34 CHALLENGES AFFECTING Women’s fOOD SECURITY AND LAND RIGHTS Part 4 2.1 Inadequate laws and policies 19 CONCLUSION › Notes 38 2.2 Implementing laws and policies 20 › Acknowledgements 43 AcronymS aDB Asian Development Bank UnCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Un-rEDD United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest IDLo International Development Law Organization Degradation IFPrI International Food Policy Research Institute Un WomEn United Nations Entity for Gender Equality oECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and the Empowerment of Women and Development USaID United States Agency for International oHCHr Office of the United Nations High Development Commissioner for Human Rights WoCAN Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture SDG Sustainable Development Goal and Natural Resources Management 03 WOMEN, FOOD, LAND: EXPLORING RULE OF LAW LINKAGES EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 04 IDLO EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Women, Food, Land: Exploring Rule of Law instruments emphasize the mutually enabling women to participate in Linkages provides an overview of the reinforcing relationship between governance of food systems and land relationship between gender equality, gender equality and the realization of tenure processes at all levels. food security and the rule of law. This women’s rights to food, land, social report lays out a series of security and work. › Collecting relevant, disaggregated data recommendations aimed at to inform and monitor food security strengthening the synergies between the Secure land rights for women are a key programs and their impact and rule of law and gender equality within part of the equation in realizing the right systematically conducting participatory sustainable development programs to to adequate food and achieving food gender impact assessments for all ensure food security for everyone. security, as well as gender equality. For policies and laws that influence land rights to be effective and women’s food security. The causes of food insecurity are transformative for women, they must be multidimensional and involve a range of supported by a coordinated and coherent › Adopting rights-based, multisector legal, political, economic, social and legal and policy framework grounded in approaches to coordinate policies and environmental factors. The dynamics of participatory approaches, subjected to laws on food security, employment, national, regional and global trade and ongoing monitoring and accountability social protection, land rights, family law markets, shifting demand for land and mechanisms and guaranteed through and agricultural development. labor, and the accessibility of natural adequate and sustainable resource resources have a decisive impact on food allocations. A wide range of › Balancing strategic, short-term security. stakeholders (including the private interventions to ensure the immediate sector, community, traditional and access of women and girls to food and Hunger and malnutrition are generally religious authorities, civil society nutrition programs against longer-term not the result of insufficient levels of organizations and donors) and strategies that aim to transform food production, but are, instead, the approaches need to be integrated within unequal power relations. outcome of systemic inequalities in policies and programs in order to ensure access to adequate food. People who are that each dimension of food security is › Regulating the private sector and food insecure are often not just hungry, implemented in practice. supporting the development and they also suffer from violations of a adoption of human rights-based number of other interdependent human Women, Food, Land: Exploring Rule of business practices in food and rights, including the rights to life, health, Law Linkages examines a number of agriculture. adequate housing, work, education, the key challenges that affect social security, political participation, women’s food security and land rights › Improving women’s access to justice non-discrimination and access to justice. – inadequate laws and policies, through rule of law interventions and implementation failures and barriers strategic engagement with informal Globally, women and girls make up the to accessing justice – and suggests dispute settlement mechanisms to majority of people who are food ways in which rule of law programs ensure they are non-discriminatory. insecure. In societies where there is a might seek to overcome them. The high degree of gender inequality, there main recommendations made by the The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable is also a significantly higher proportion International Development Law Development acknowledges the of undernourishment among women Organization (IDLO) in this report are mutually reinforcing relationship and girls. Evidence shows that when underpinned by promising practices between food security, gender equality women are empowered through in using the rule of law to ensure and the rule of law as pillars of education, economic opportunities, gender equality, land rights and food sustainable development. Rule of law access to justice and political security for women around the world. interventions can make a decisive participation, they are better able to These recommendations, which are contribution to the effective claim their right to food and to directed at a range of different implementation of gender-sensitive contribute to ensuring food security for stakeholders, include: policies and laws on food security and others at the household, community, land rights, while empowering women to national and international levels. The › Facilitating participation by diverse become equal partners in decision- 2030 Agenda for Sustainable groups of women in decision-making making within the household, in the Development and a growing number of structures, supporting consultative and community and in economic, social and other international policy and legal inclusive law-making processes and political institutions. 05 WOMEN, FOOD, LAND: EXPLORING RULE OF LAW LINKAGES PARt 1 Introduction 06 IDLO Introduction omen account for 70 per means for its procurement:“hunger on nutrition, work, social protection, land cent of the world’s hungry, its own cannot be addressed without and other productive resources, results and are disproportionately also considering wider structural in a failure to ensure that these human Waffected by malnutrition, yet constraints, including nutrition, rights are respected, protected and they are responsible for more than half agricultural and land use practices, and fulfilled in practice. of global food production.1 access/distribution issues”.4 Gender- based discrimination is one of the most This report (1) explores the linkages We live in a world of abundance yet significant obstacles to the realization of between food security (including the role ensuring global food security remains food security for everyone.5 played by decent employment challenging, with women being opportunities and social protection in disproportionately affected by hunger While food insecurity has many causes, ensuring the right to food), access to and malnutrition. While there has been a policies, laws and legal systems play a land and productive natural resources, significant reduction in hunger crucial role in guaranteeing gender gender equality and the law; (2) throughout the world in recent decades, equality, food security and equal access identifies challenges to women’s the demand for food is predicted to rise to land and productive resources. In equality that affect food security; and (3) by 70 per cent by 2050,2 and it has been many countries, however, a lack of offers ways forward to promote the rule estimated that climate change will attention to the discriminatory impact of of law in order to realize greater food increase the risk of undernourishment policies and formal and informal laws on security for women within programming for 175 million people by 2080.3 women’s equal rights to food and for sustainable development.