speech on zero hunger

Ending hunger

Ending world hunger is one of the greatest challenges of our times. Across the globe, as many as 309 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity in 2024 in the 72 countries with WFP operations and where data is available. Around  42 million people in 45 countries are at 'emergency' or worse levels of hunger . 

The consequence of diets poor in vitamins, minerals and other nutrients are affecting the health and life prospects of millions more, and casting a shadow over the future of communities and entire countries.  

Although enough food is produced to feed everyone on this planet, the goal of a world with zero hunger , as set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and specifically in  Sustainable Development Goal 2 , remains hugely challenging due to a toxic cocktail of conflict, climate change, disasters and structural poverty and inequality . Over the past two years, the socioeconomic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have further exacerbated global hunger by pushing millions of vulnerable people into greater food insecurity and driving up the costs of reaching people in need. WFP works on various activities in seeking solutions to hunger.

World hunger: causes and solutions

60 percent of the world’s hungry people live in zones affected by conflict, which is the main driver in 8 out of 10 of the worst hunger crises (as in the case of Yemen, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, for example).

What we are doing 

Food and nutrition assistance

WFP brings life-saving food and nutrition assistance to people trapped or displaced by fighting, wherever they are. With the help of local partners, we reach those in need even in the most remote areas, using all-terrain vehicles and dropping food from planes when all other avenues are closed.

Our assistance can help create pathways to peace, as recognized in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to WFP in 2020.

Prospects for peace

Preliminary findings from a joint research study with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute indicated that WFP’s work to solve world hunger contributed to improving prospects for peace. It did this by enhancing access to contested natural resources, boosting social cohesion and resolving grievances within and between communities, while increasing opportunities and trust between people and government through strengthening state accountability and service delivery. The study focused on El Salvador, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and Mali.

Climate change

The impacts of the climate crisis such as floods, drought or heatwaves affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, aggravating poverty, world hunger and social tensions. WFP helps governments and communities to adopt to the changing climate and protect themselves and their food security from climate impacts.

What we are doing

Anticipatory action

WFP’s Anticipatory Action programme uses early warning systems to trigger humanitarian action before extreme weather events impact communities, allowing them to protect themselves, their homes, livestock and buy food and other essential items. 

Climate-smart energy solutions

To ensure people can cook and consume food safely, WFP facilitates access to modern cooking solutions such as gas stoves, mini-gasifiers or electric pressure cookers. WFP also strives to empower smallholder farmers through the distribution of sustainable energy equipment and services that boost food production, processing and preservation.

When an earthquake, cyclone, a hurricane or other disaster strikes, WFP is a first responder, bringing food and other life-saving assistance to populations that have lost everything.

As the leader of the inter-agency Logistics Cluster , WFP provides coordination and information management in the response to large-scale disasters.

Connectivity

WFP leads the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster , which provides life-saving connectivity in emergency situations. WFP’s Fast IT and Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team of responders (FITTEST) is ready to deploy anywhere in the world to establish and restore communications and information technology networks.

Geospatial analyses

Targeted geospatial analyses show the immediate impact of natural disasters and allow for a faster response matched to needs. Our Geographic Information Systems tools such as ADAM (Automatic Disaster Analysis & Mapping) provide 24/7 mapping of earthquakes and tropical cyclones.

Inequality drives global hunger by limiting people's opportunities and increasing levels of hunger. Increasing access to employment, finance and markets, for example, can lift people out of poverty very quickly, increasing their productivity and spending power, and stimulating local markets.

Food assistance for assets

WFP’s Food Assistance for Assets programme involves people working on community projects such as restoring unproductive land, in return for cash or food. The private sector-focused Farm to Market Alliance connects smallholders to markets and helps them diversify their crops and increase their business potential.

Cash transfers

Where markets and financial systems are functioning, WFP provides assistance in cash. Whether in the form of bank notes, vouchers, debit cards, e-money or mobile money, cash transfers allow people to make choices that improve their food security and nutrition, and inject cash into the local economy.

Social safety nets

WFP supports governments in strengthening the social safety nets they have in place to protect their citizens from poverty, inequality and  hunger. We also work to enhance the ability of these systems to respond to shocks such as disasters or mass population displacements.

Poor storage facilities in farms lead to pest infestations and mould ruining crops. Lack of access to technology and markets means many farmers are forced to watch their crops rot in fields, as the labour and financial investment required to harvest them is often unavailable.

Zero post-harvest losses

WFP’s Zero Post-Harvest Losses project teaches smallholder farmers how to use improved post-harvest handling methods, combined with simple but effective hermetic storage equipment to protect crops against insects, rodents, mould and moisture.

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions more people into hunger by disrupting production, trade and livelihoods, putting millions out of work.

Common services

WFP set up Common Services – global passenger and cargo movement services – allowing humanitarian staff and food and health supplies to reach vulnerable people around the world, who would otherwise be cut off from support when they needed it most.

Food and cash assistance

To address the increased needs created by the socioeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, WFP has stepped up its cash and food assistance, and supported governments in strengthening their own social safety nets.

Fighting famine

WFP and the Sustainable Development Goals

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TEDx Talks: Are We Ready to End World Hunger?

This spring at TEDx OakLawn, I shared a brief history of the fight against global hunger – and how we’re closer to winning it than ever before.

Albert Einstein’s brain was dissected in 1955, but the world wouldn’t find out for another 20 years. When the news broke that a scientist had been secretly studying Einstein’s grey matter, universities and museums the world around fought to get a piece of the action—quite literally.

But amid the rancor and debate, renowned paleontologist Steven J. Gould quietly recorded this profound thought: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

Watch The Full Video:

I think about this almost daily in my job at the World Food Program USA, because an even greater number have died of hunger. We see it in the news everyday—a rise in the absolute number of hungry people, an unprecedented four looming famines and of more hungry people displaced from their homes because of violence, conflict and persecution than any other time since the Second World War.

But it’s worth recalling a quote from the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of true intelligence,” he wrote, “is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time.” This is fundamentally true of global hunger today. Because over the last 20 years, over 200 million people have been lifted out of hunger. Famines still occur, but they kill far fewer people than ever before thanks to early warning systems and improved humanitarian responses. We have never had better tools to fight food insecurity.

At the risk of quoting another 20th century author, in the fight to end hunger, it is the best of times and it is the worst of times. So while the headlines can feel disheartening, as a person that follows global hunger trends for a living, I can tell you this with absolute certainty: We are winning the long game in the fight to end hunger.

The “Availability Heuristic”

Consider these two headlines:

• World Faces ‘Unprecedented’ Hunger as Famine Threatens Four Countries
• World Hunger is Increasing Thanks to Wars and Climate Change 

Stories like this come at us at warp speed today—a never-ending stream of push notifications onto cell phones that never leave our hands.

Between 2015 and 2016, the number of hungry people on the planet rose from 777 million to 815 million, driven by a proliferation of man-made crises. Increases in the outright number of hungry people in the world have happened in the past, as recently as a decade ago following the global food price spike crises of 2007/8. While there are important (and worrying) reasons to believe that this upward tick may be unique relative to previous “relapses,” in the words of Steven Pinker: “It would be astonishing if any measure of human behavior with all its vicissitudes ticked downward by a constant amount per unit of time, decade after decade and century after century.” He states further, “Seeing how journalistic habits and cognitive biases bring out the worst in each other, how do we soundly appraise the state of the world? The answer is to count.”

More specifically, we count further back in time. While it is true that the number of hungry people is on the rise again, the general trend in hunger over the past decade tells a far different story (Figure 2). It wasn’t long ago, in fact, that we were speaking of a billion hungry people on the planet. This recent spikes hides a brighter medium and long-term trend.

As we broaden our lens even further, there is more good news. Thanks to research by Alex de Waal, we’re able to see dramatic progress in with regard to famine prevention and response specifically (Figure 3). In his latest book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine , de Waal shows that deaths from famine today are occurring at a fraction of what they have historically. “Our ultimate goal,” writes de Waal, “is to render mass starvation so morally toxic, that it is universally publicly vilified. We aim to make mass starvation unthinkable, such that political and military leaders in a position to inflict it or fail to prevent it, will unhesitatingly ensure that it does not occur, and the public will demand this of them.” There is some evidence to suggest that we’re doing just that.

In short, we can fight the availability heuristic when we choose to take a step back. It is when we look at progress in the long arc of human history that we see just how close we are to ending hunger for good. Hunger is not just a challenge of our generation—it is a battle that human beings have been fighting for millennia. And the story of our progress in ending hunger falls into clear stages, or quarters if you’ll allow a football reference. This is how that game has played out.

The First Quarter

In the first quarter, we fought a battle against population growth. Thomas Malthus, the English philosopher and cleric, prophesized in the 1798 in his book, Essay on the Principle of Population , that food production would not keep pace with population growth, leading to resource competition, violent conflict and mass starvation. It was through war and suffering that equilibrium would be returned to the global food system.

Thus began the battle between “Malthusians,” like Thomas, and so-called “Cornucopians”—those that thought humans would successfully engineer their way out the population dilemma. The Green Revolution in the 1960s and 70s successfully staved off Malthus’ doomsday scenario on a global scale, with industrial agriculture and improved seeds and practices winning the day.

When Malthus wrote his famous essay, the Earth was home to about a billion people. Today, we number over seven billion—and we produce over 2,500 calories for every man, woman and child on the planet. And while we will need to increase production by 50 to 70 percent to meet a population approaching 10 billion by 2050, this is well within our reach.

Thomas Malthus’s doomsday population bomb theory—carried forward by modern theorists like Paul Ehrlich—has been called a “zombie concept” by experts like Alex de Waal, because it is one that “scholars of agricultural economics have continually refuted, but it still keeps coming back to life to torment the living.” Generations after Malthus, the idea that population growth will outstrip food production has been thoroughly debunked.

The Second Quarter

In the second quarter, the central challenge in feeding the world was a natural extension of the first. If we accept that we can feed a growing human population, the next logical question is whether we can do it sustainably. Years of industrial agriculture and monoculture production wreaked havoc on our environment. After all, the same technology that fueled our bombs in the Second World War had been put to work in our fields. It can take 1,000 years to develop an inch of topsoil through natural processes, and we did away with a lot of it in just decades.

These are fragile systems, and we know more about the surface of the moon than the three feet of soil beneath us. David Attenborough once said, “If you believe you can have infinite growth on a finite planet, then you are either a madman or an economist.” I might add 20th Century farmers to this list.

But it was in this quarter that we started to appreciate ecological tipping points and began to talk about things like “planetary boundaries.” We learned that our agricultural practices were contributing to 25 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions, making climate change worse. As a general rule-of-thumb, climate scientists expect a 10 percent drop in crop yields for every one degree Celsius rise in mean global temperatures. We’re on pace for three degree increase by the close of the century. As many as 200 million people will be pushed into poverty and hunger by climate change if left unchecked.

Carryover Cornucopians from the first quarter clashed with ecologists like William Vogt in the second. Environmentalists sounded the alarm bells, arguing for the complete transformation of our food systems toward more sustainable models. Charles C. Mann refers to these two schools of thought as “wizards” and “prophets”— Wizards engineering their way out of this new ecological problem following the Cornucopian playbook and prophets faithfully stewarding the planet’s limited resources.

As a result, and in a hand-in-hand walk between Wizards and Prophets (sometimes begrudgingly so), we’ve already started to roll out common sense strategies like cover cropping and zero till agriculture. We developed new plant varieties using genetic engineering—not for commercial pesticide resistance like you so often read in the news, but to deal with things saltwater intrusion from sea level rise and drought from changing rainfall patterns. We’ve meticulously cataloged seeds and we’ve seen dramatic growth and interest in local food production. Hypotheses like “can organic agriculture feed the world” have been thoroughly tested, and the results are promising.

The Third Quarter

In the third quarter, we acknowledged the link between agriculture and nutrition. As strange as it may sound, we long considered agriculture and nutrition as two distinct concepts. Thanks to research on child and maternal health, we know that children who do not receive proper nutrition in their first thousand days of life will experience a lifetime of negative affects —physical stunting, reduced educational achievement and economic performance. These impacts costs economies trillions of dollars each year.

Meanwhile, in the industrialized world—and increasingly in developing countries—societies face the dual burden of hunger alongside obesity. At least as many people are obese on this planet as are hungry, well over a billion people. Josette Sheeran, former Executive Director of the World Food Programme, referred to our improved understanding of nutrition as the latest “burden of knowledge” facing hunger fighters.

We’ve translated this burden into specialized food aid products like “Plumpy’Nut” that can bring a child back from the brink of starvation. We’ve bio-fortified staple crops with Vitamin A and Zinc and other vitamins and minerals—so effectively that the minds behind this were awarded the World Food Prize in 2016. We’ve renewed efforts to get mothers breastfeeding around the world. This is how we’re closing out the third quarter. We’ve moved from trying to feed the world to trying to nourish the world. The next big idea that changes the course of humanity—the next Einstein-sized idea—may come from a truly unsuspecting place, but it will not come from the mind of a child who is stunted.

Across these quarters, it is not by the immutable laws of physics that hunger has declined—quite the opposite. It has been through the unlikely march of human progress in the face of overwhelming odds. Hunger hasn’t declined naturally, someone had to act. It was our early ancestors domesticating wheat in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago; it was Norman Borlaug developing dwarf wheat in a laboratory in Mexico that would spark the Green Revolution; it was Senator George McGovern shepherding the idea of a World Food Programme into reality.

In the long struggle between humans and their natural environment, humans have been putting their thumb on the scale in ways big and small, tipping the balance in our favor—“Wizards” and “Prophets,” “Malthusians” and “Cornucopians” alike.

So let me say this again: We are winning the long game in the fight to end hunger. We asked ourselves, “Can we end hunger in the face of population growth?” We answered a resounding yes. We asked ourselves, “Can we end hunger sustainably in the face of population growth?” We wrote a playbook and we’re rolling it out. We asked ourselves, “Can we end hunger sustainably and nutritiously in the face of population growth?” That’s the mission that we’re currently on.

Human beings have built a doomsday bunker for plant genetic material in the frozen arctic of Norway. We are leveraging the big-data revolution to guide our tractors with satellite precision. WFP has adopted block-chain technology —the foundation of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies—to deliver humanitarian assistance and improve the efficiency of their supply chains. Meanwhile, in blue skies research, scientists are developing plant varieties that photosynthesize more efficiently and non-leguminous crops that fix nitrogen in the soil. We are questioning the way we do things. We are even questioning whether food needs soil—there has been a dramatic increase in hydroponics and vertical gardening. We have thrown everything we have at the problem of hunger—and it’s finally sticking, at scale.

This is good news story, to be sure, but this narrative is not meant to lull us into apathy. Bending the hunger curve toward zero has long relied on the extreme urgency of now. Trends only emerge as time piles up, and positive trends like the one we’ve experienced in global hunger only happen when we take concerted and sustained action. We cannot afford to take our eye off the ball, because we’re entering into the fourth quarter.

The Fourth Quarter

Many a game has been lost in the fourth quarter. In this quarter, the long trajectory of progress in the fight to end hunger meets head-on with a rise in global conflict. We’ve seen an increase in state fragility in the world. Over 60 percent of the world’s hungry live in conflict-affected countries. Almost 122 million, or 75 percent, of stunted children under age five live in these same places. Man-made conflict drives 80 percent of humanitarian spending while natural disaster accounts for just one in every five dollars—a complete reversal from 20 years earlier.

But here is what is important. This collision between hunger and conflict forces us to acknowledge the root political causes of hunger—something we have long ignored or at least under-appreciated. Hunger has always been a technical problem—“How do we grow more, better?” But we’ve done away with those technical barriers in the first three quarters. The only remaining hurdle to ending hunger for all time is abundantly political.

Once we accept that food security is fundamental to peace and security, we are forced to do something about it. It’s not just a matter of doing more than the next donor on moral or economic grounds or making investments in agricultural to tick a box. In the fourth quarter, food security will be seen as a pillar of global stability. And it needs to be, because that’s how we finally get the job done.

George McGovern, a former U.S. Senator and prominent anti-hunger advocate, wrote in his 2000 book, The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in our Time , “I give you my word that anyone who looks honestly at world hunger and measures the cost of ending it for all time will conclude that this is a bargain well worth seizing.”

We are the Zero Hunger Generation—the first generation in human history capable of seizing that bargain. Pause for a moment and think about what that means in practice. Human beings have been on this Earth for around 150,000 years. For the first 149,950, the baseline condition for humanity has been poverty, hunger and desperation. Yet here you are, reading this in 2018 (or beyond) with all of the tools to finally watch hunger stop.

In the long arc of human history, the world has never been more full of promise.

Watch The Full Video

*Chase Sova is the senior director of public policy at WFP USA. 

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Sustainable development goal: zero hunger.

More than 800 million people around the world are hungry. The United Nations’s second Sustainable Development Goal, Zero Hunger, aims to end world hunger by 2030.

Conservation, Social Studies, Civics, Economics

Migrants in Italy

People displaced from their homes because of war and conflict—as some of the migrants shown here in Rome, Italy, likely are—often are vulnerable to hunger.

Photograph by Stefano Montesi/Corbis

In 2012, at the United Nations (UN) Conferences on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, world representatives created the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The purpose of creating SDGs was “to produce a set of universal goals that meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world,” according to the UN Development Programme. There are 17 SDGs that the UN hopes to meet by 2030, the second of which is Zero Hunger . Hunger is not caused by food shortage alone, but by a combination of natural, social, and political forces. Currently, natural resources that are necessary for human survival—like freshwater, the ocean, forests, soils, and more—are dwindling. Climate change is contributing to the degradation of precious resources, as severe weather events, like droughts, become more common and affect harvests, leading to less food for human consumption. Poverty and inequality are also two drivers of hunger, affecting who can buy food, as well as what kind of food, and how much, is available. Hunger is also a product of war and conflict. During periods of unrest, a country's economy and infrastructure can become severely damaged. This negatively affects civilian access to food by either driving up food prices, interfering with food production, or forcing people from their homes. Some governments and military groups have even used starvation as a war tactic, cutting off civilians from their food supply. In 2018, the UN declared this tactic a war crime . With these problems in mind, the world needs sustainable solutions to adequately feed each person on the planet. Right now, there are around 815 million people who are hungry. This number is only expected to increase as the years go on; the UN estimates that two billion more people will be undernourished by 2050. The Zero Hunger SDG focuses on finding sustainable solutions to stop world hunger. The goals of the Zero Hunger initiative are to end hunger and make sure that enough nutritious foods are available to people by 2030. Other aspects of the goal include ending all forms of malnutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture . One environmental scientist that is working to alleviate world hunger is Jennifer Anne Burney. She is a National Geographic Explorer and associate professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California at San Diego. Concentrating on ensuring food security for the world as well as limiting climate change, Burney designs and uses technologies to improve food and nutrition security.

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Goal 2 Zero hunger

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End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Rapid economic growth and increased agricultural productivity over the past two decades has seen the proportion of undernourished people drop by almost half.

Many developing countries that used to suffer from famine and hunger can now meet the nutritional needs of the most vulnerable. Central and East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have all made huge progress in eradicating extreme hunger.

These are all significant achievements in reaching the targets set out by the first Millennium Development Goals. Unfortunately, extreme hunger and malnutrition remain a huge barrier to development in many countries. 795 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished as of 2014, often as a direct consequence of environmental degradation, drought and loss of biodiversity. Over 90 million children under the age of five are dangerously underweight. And one person in every four still goes hungry in Africa.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to end all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, making sure all people – especially children and the more vulnerable – have access to sufficient and nutritious food all year round. This involves promoting sustainable agricultural practices: improving the livelihoods and capacities of small scale famers, allowing equal access to land, technology and markets. It also requires international cooperation to ensure investment in infrastructure and technology to improve agricultural productivity.

Together with the other goals set out here, we can end hunger by 2030.

Zero Hunger is one of 17 Global Goals that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development . An integrated approach is crucial for progress across the multiple goals.

Learn more about the targets for Goal 2 .

• Current estimates are that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9 percent of the world population – up by 10 million people in one year and by nearly 60 million in five years.
• The majority of the world’s undernourished – 381 million – are still found in Asia. More than 250 million live in Africa, where the number of undernourished is growing faster than anywhere in the world.
• In 2019, close to 750 million – or nearly one in ten people in the world – were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity.
• An estimated 2 billion people in the world did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019.
• If recent trends continue , the number of people affected by hunger will surpass 840 million by 2030, or 9.8 percent of the global population.
• 144 million children under age 5 were affected by stunting in 2019, with three quarters living in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
• In 2019, 6.9 per cent (or 47 million) children under 5 were affected by wasting, or acute undernutrition, a condition caused by limited nutrient intake and infection.
• By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round
• By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons
• By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment
• By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality
• By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed
• Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries
• Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round
• Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility
• International Fund for Agricultural Development
• Food and Agriculture Organization
• World Food Programme
• UNICEF – Nutrition
• Zero Hunger Challenge
• Think.Eat.Save.   Reduce your foodprint.
• UNDP – Hunger

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Zero Hunger

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

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Speech: Empowering Africa’s rural women for zero hunger and shared prosperity

Date: Wednesday, 26 September 2018

H. E. Josefa Leonel Correa Sacko, Africa Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture;

H. E. José Graziano da Silva, Director General of FAO;

Ms. Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary, UNECA (to be confirmed);

Distinguished Panelists;

Honorable representatives of rural women from Africa;

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today’s discussion on ‘ Empowering Africa’s Rural Women for Zero Hunger and Shared Prosperity’ , explicitly recognizes the centrality of women and girls to the sustainability of rural households and communities, improving rural livelihoods and overall wellbeing in a context in which often their role and significance is overlooked and undervalued.

It is well known that rural women in Africa, particularly women farmers, are the backbone of family and community agricultural production and food security.

African women make more than 60 per cent of those employed in the agricultural sector, making them important contributors to food production and preservation.

Yet they also endure the worst working conditions, with low pay and little or no social protection; limited or non-access to the business and financial services and support they need to prosper; and they also remain largely excluded from owning land, benefiting from resource wealth or participating in decision-making.

This reality continues to exacerbate the devastating effects of climate change in food production.

We continue to witness how this phenomenon disrupts agricultural production systems and exacerbates existing gender inequalities, creating new barriers and risks for women farmers and food security.

There is increasing international concern for the realities and challenges rural women face.

This year’s 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women focused on rural women as priority. In its deliberations, the Commission recognized that women and girls who live in rural areas are at higher risk of being left behind and that our ability to address their needs is the biggest contribution we can make to ensure the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved.

For UN Women rural women are also a high priority.

In our programming work, for example, through our Flagship Programme Initiative on climate-resilient agriculture programme, UN Women is supporting member states in their efforts to enhance women farmers’ land tenure security, access to climate information and financing, and higher value chains and markets. This aiming at safeguarding food and nutrition security in more than 13 African countries.

UN Women, in partnership with FAO, IFAD and WFP, is also implementing a joint programme on “Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women” in four African countries: Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger and Rwanda, where we are reaching over 40,000 women to work together for: (i) improved food security and nutrition; (ii) increased income opportunities; (iii) enhanced leadership and participation; and (iv) gender responsive policy environment.

Over the past 18 years, great progress had been made to protect the rights of women and girls living in rural areas. Global food security has improved also, but challenges remain.

This is why both empowering rural women and food security are overriding priorities of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

These international agreements provide a strong framework for a comprehensive approach to realizing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls living in rural areas.

As the African Women’s Decade draws to a close in 2020 and it coincide the 25 th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, there is momentum for the international community to take to accelerate action and to achieve concrete results by 2020.

In enhancing this momentum, I call upon Member States to:

• support the Kilimanjaro Initiative to mobilize rural women to take part in the decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods;
• accelerate the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security;
• leverage the AU’s and RECs’ (Regional Economic Communities) protocols and agreements for regional economic integration and more just and equitable agricultural commodity trade for women farmers; and
• support regional SDG reviews that incorporate the concerns of rural women.

My call to the AU Member States is to continue to facilitate the participation and leadership of women at all levels.Also, the Regional Outlook on Gender and Agri-food Systems is timely. I congratulate the African Union and FAO on its launch. It will definitely allow us to better track progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment in relation to agriculture and food security.

The UN system is also called to step it up in support to both gender equality and food security.

Ensuring prioritizing greater inter-agency and system-wide coordination to support sustainable agriculture is a most.

• Example of joint action include our work with the African Development Bank’s Hi-5 initiative, which supports the continent’s transition to inclusive and green growth.
• While the programme is empowering rural women leaders in enhancing food security and addressing severe nutrition challenges, it also demonstrates how UN collaboration can accelerate progress on achieving zero hunger and nutrition in the context of the SDGs.

Let me finalize my presentation by paying tribute to the African rural women.

We recognize the proven knowledge and skills African rural women have in relation to managing natural resources sustainably and adapting to climate change. Food security depends on this expertise and knowledge. The whole sustainability project is on the hands of rural women. The peaceful and prosperous future for all of humanity is on their hands. Their contributions and leadership are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda.

A society of gender equality and zero hunger in our lifetime is possible. Redoubling of current efforts and a push for political commitment and timely concrete actions is pivotal. Empowering poor African rural women should be granted the highest political will if African hunger is to be eradicated if a shared prosperity is to be achieved.

I thank you.

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