Three United Nations agencies have agreed to a two-year cooperative action plan to advance gender equality and rural women’s empowerment in Latin America and the Caribbean. (LAC)
UN Women stated that the agreement was signed in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
“Rural women face numerous barriers to achieving economic independence and stability.” “In times of crisis, rural women are disproportionately affected by limited access to resources, services, and information, the heavy burden of unpaid household and care work, and discriminatory traditional social norms,” UN Women said, adding that rural women account for one-third of the global population and 43% of the agricultural labor force.
According to the FAO, women account for more than 20% of agricultural employment in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The action plan proposed by these three UN agencies is structured around two areas: high-level political and policy advocacy to accelerate the reduction of the gender gap in access to productive resources to achieve food and nutritional security in LAC, in accordance with SDGs 2 (Zero Hunger) and 5 (Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment).
The second priority is to increase rural coverage of care services, sexual and reproductive health, and gender-based violence in the region, as well as to produce data and information on rural women in the context of agri-food systems, including data on their physical, economic, and decision-making autonomy.
According to UN Women, the collaborative activity would take an intersectional approach, prioritizing indigenous peoples and afro-descendants, age and human mobility considerations, and mobilizing resources to make joint actions practicable in the territories and communities.
“The collaboration between FAO, UN Women, and UNFPA will contribute to addressing gender inequalities as well as food and nutrition insecurity, complementing actions that support the empowerment processes of rural women in Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Mario Lubetkin, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We will work together to reduce gender gaps in access to productive resources, improve women’s economic autonomy and climate resilience, and achieve more sustainable and inclusive agri-food systems throughout the region,” he said in a statement.
The action plan with FAO and UNFPA, according to UN Women’s Deputy Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, is “aligned with UN Women’s regional strategy to achieve economic autonomy and access to comprehensive care systems for rural women in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
“For UN Women, it is essential that all efforts by governments in the region to reduce poverty, inequality, and hunger, as well as productive, agrifood and environmental policies, incorporate a gender perspective and address the discrimination faced particularly by rural, indigenous, Afro-descendant and women in mobility situations,” she said in a statement.
According to Susana Sottoli, UNFPA Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, ensuring rural women’s autonomy is “a priority task that cannot be postponed, and it is a task that we must do jointly.”
She stated that this agreement “contributes to and gives meaning to previous actions.”
“It is very important to strengthen this type of collaboration at the regional level,” Sottoli told reporters. “The situations and problems we work with are complex because they reflect multiple dimensions, necessitating collaborative efforts.”
“All sustainable food systems are deeply rooted in the daily lives of families and especially of women in the sense that issues such as maternal mortality have had setbacks in the region, returning to basic situations where women die in childbirth or postpartum, which is closely related to the nutritional situation of women,” she went on to say.
