Gender: Diverse Women For Diversity
The World Food Summit is being organized in June this year in Rome, five years after the last Food Summit
Five years after the last Food Summit, hunger and malnutrition has grown enormously, particularly in the third World countries. The public distribution system of these countries, which embodied their food security, is being slowly dismantled. In spite of being primarily agrarian economies, food prices in these countries have been rising steadily along with similar decrease in farm prices. Agricultural livelihoods are being destroyed, creating deeper poverty and deeper hunger and especially effecting food entitlements of women & children. The impact of policies such as dumping, corporatization of agriculture, are also becoming sources of conflict in the South Asian region.
Women have been at the center of providing food security and are the keepers of biodiversity and cultural diversity. It is imperative that women from the South Asian Region to understand and assess the impact of international & national changes on their national and their household food security; and decide what should be the framework of the new policies. The women of these countries need to devise strategies for letting their voices heard and registering their concerns at the regional and the global level. They need to inform policy makers at these debates.
To discuss these critical issues at an opportune time, please make it convenient to attend the Policy Dialogue on Keeping Food Security in Women's hands on 12th May at Hotel Himalaya, Katmandu, Nepal, which coincides with the Regional Food Summit being held on 11-12 May at Katmandu. The Dialogue is being jointly organized by Shtrii Shakti, Nepal and Diverse Women for Diversity, India. Following the Dialogue, there is going to be a big rally on 13th May to mobilize and inform people about the new policies that may further jeopardize their food security.
The outcome of the Dialogue will inform the Regional Food Summit, as well as provide inputs both at the World Food Summit and the WTO Review of the Agreement on Agriculture.
