27 July 2022 Statement delivered by Deirdre “Dee” Woods on behalf of the CSIPM during the third…
Rome, Italy. 28 June 2022. On the occasion of the Global Pride Day, the CSIPM women and…
The CSIPM Women Working Group has been renamed to Women and Gender Diversities Working Group in order…
27 April 2022, Rome, Italy. In the context of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS)…
The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the UN Committee on World Food…
Background information and upcoming calendar of meetings Background From September to November 2021 the CFS held six…
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will hold six regional consultations between September and November 2021. These consultations will contribute to the preparation of the Voluntary Guidelines (VGs) on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (GEWE) in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition.
Gender, COVID-19 and Food Systems: impacts, community responses and feminist policy demands DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE! This publication is a report of the CSM Women’s Working Group. It was authored by Jessica Duncan and Priscilla Claeys in consultation with the Women’s Working Group. “We won’t go back to normality, because normality was the problem.” With this sentence projected on the facade of a building in Santiago of Chile in March 2020, grassroots and feminist movements clearly articulated their perspective on the COVID-19 crisis. This is a profound and unprecedented global crisis that is exacerbating and leveraging pre-existent systemic forms of patriarchal inequalities, oppressions, racism, colonialism, violence and discrimination that cannot be tolerated. With this sentence capturing the public space and visibility of a building, feminist movements also proclaimed that they would not surrender to isolation and the silencing of their voices, struggles and demands during this pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered the structural vulnerabilities and weaknesses of our food systems. Neoliberalism, global capitalism and feudalism[i] have been eroding for decades our social protection and welfare systems, fostering the structural colonial deprivation and grabbing of natural resources of the global south, violating human rights, harming ecosystems and biodiversity and strengthening the sexual division of labor, leaving women to face alone the burden of productive and social reproductive work. From a feminist perspective, the COVID-19 crisis is indeed a global care crisis, where states and governments have failed to prioritize people’s interests, while (transnational) corporations are increasingly capturing and dismantling the public commons to impose their own private interest. This pattern is also well reflected in the current production and consumption food systems. It has been suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world in 2020 depending on the economic growth scenario.[ii] Women are indeed positioned, due to their gender-assigned roles, to be disproportionately impacted, as they are literally on the front line of the crisis.Women and girls are the majority of food producers and providers for their households, they are the majority of nurses, care and social workers, food and agricultural workers and teachers. Yet, they have been consistently overlooked and invisible in research and responses to the pandemic. Gender inequality and discrimination is shaping, and will continue to shape, the COVID-19 pandemic in tangible and significant ways. The collective spirit and emotional intensity generated during
15 October 2019 CSM Statement at CFS 46 on the International Day of Rural Women Delivered on behalf of CSM by Silvia Dywili, World March of Women, Mozambique It is shocking that 820 million people are living with hunger, majority of them being women in every region. We believe that the current global food system builds on and perpetuates gender-based discrimination and the violation of women’s rights. In order to achieve a fair and equal society where women can fully enjoy their rights, we must put at the centre the alternative model of consumption and production that ensure women’s rights, recognize their central role and that it is founded on agroecology and the food sovereignty paradigm. We recognize the CEDAW and the General Recommendation 34 on Rights of Rural women. Land rights remain at the heart of our demands as women especially young women are by far the largest segment that is landless in the world. The corporate capture of land is resulting in immense land grab across countries. As part of the control over resources land grab is topmost; even rich countries, land scarce and food scarce countries are grabbing land. Result is massive evictions of our people, especially the indigenous people and rural communities are being hunted and forced to leave their ancestral lands, often leaving behind women. Though demand for land rights remains at the heart of the struggle for women’s rights, they also demand access and control over all reproductive resources, control over markets. The current fight over resources is having a huge impact on the lives of women and girls and face continuous violence- physical, economic and political. Patriarchy continues to have a huge role in controlling the lives of women and especially young women. They are the ones who go hungry; in Mozambique women and children are the biggest segment who are part of the anemic malnourished. Women are at the fore front of demanding agroecology as a form of production to overcome many forms of violence in their lives. One is that it allows them to grow wholesome healthy food free from the poisons of industrial chemical food production system. Agroecology is also the way ahead to fight climate crisis. It’s critical that women’s rights are held paramount. Currently, very weak policies and strategies are used to dilute women’s rights. For us, empowerment of women is not equal to women’s rights; we are empowered
CSM side event @CFS 46 The impact of extractivism on women’s right to food and the struggle for a just transition Addressing root causes of violence against women and the way ahead for concrete solutions towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda 17 October 2019 08.30 – 10.00 Iran room DOWNLOAD THE FLYER SUMMARY OF THE SIDE EVENT Panelists: Samantha Hargreaves – WoMin (South Africa) Chaturika Sewwandi – National Federation of Women of Vikalpani (Sri Lanka) Laura Hurtado – National Director of ActionAid Guatemala (Guatemala), connected by telephone from Geneva Dercy Teles de Carvalho Cunha – President of the Rural Workers’ Union of Xapuri Municipality and President of the Small Farmers’ Association 11 June, Amazonia, Brazil Moderator: Azra Sayeed – International Women’s Alliance (Pakistan) The side event aims to explore the different aspects of extractive industries (from monoculture plantations to mining) and intends to make a linkage on how the environment and health impacts of this production are directly affecting women’s right to food and their empowerment. The event also wants to highlight what role that the CFS can play looking towards the upcoming CFS workstream on gender equality and women’s empowerment, to ensure a just transition towards the achievement of Agenda 2030. Moreover, we will also address how violence against women is strictly linked to women’s food insecurity and malnutrition and, often, how violence worsened when women live in areas where extractives projects are taking place. Interpretation available in EN/ES/FR
An input and vision paper of the CSM Working Group of Women Without feminism there is no agroecology! Towards healthy, sustainable and just food systems August 2019 This document intends to inform CSM positions towards the upcoming CFS Policy Process on Agroecology and other innovations. A shorter version of this vision is also included in the new edition 2019 of the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition This text is the outcome of an incredible collective work and was adopted by the CSM Women Working Group that counts with 190 participating organisations in August 2019. It wouldn’t have been possible without the commitment and engagement of many special women. DOWNLOAD AND READ THE PAPER HERE!