The UN Human Rights Advisory Committee has published a preliminary study on the rights of people working and living in rural areas. This study explores the means of advancing the rights of people working in rural areas, including women, with a focus on smallholders engaged in the production of food. The report records that 80% of the world’s hungry live in rural areas and 75% of the 1 billion people living in extreme poverty live and work in rural areas. 

The report prioritises rural women. It observes that as many as 70% of the world’s hungry are women and most of them work in agriculture. Women are central to sustaining food security in homes. They do this through the production of between 60—80% of food crops in developing countries and by earning incomes to feed their families. Despite the fact that women are pivotal to agricultural production, they face discrimination in gaining access to and control over productive resources like land, water and credit. 

The main causes of discrimination against people working and living in rural areas, including women, are linked to human rights violations, including the expropriation of land, forced evictions, gender discrimination, and poor rural development policies. 

The discrimination against people living and working in rural areas is a contravention of various international human rights instruments including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The rights transgressed include the rights to food, to adequate housing and to health, as well as the right to equality. 

The report calls for better implementation of the various existing international norms and the improved filling of normative gaps under international human rights law. The report concludes that the previous two steps alone will not suffice and that there is a need to create a new international instrument specifically dedicated to the rights of people living and working in rural areas. 

The report calls for the development of the instrument to be an inclusive process which consults with all affected rural people. 

The report does not expressly highlight the plight of children, a constituency in rural areas that is severely prejudiced in terms of exploitation, hunger and extreme poverty. It is critical that children in rural areas be included in the development of any such international instrument and that their rights receive adequate protection. 

The drive towards improved access to food and other rights in rural areas is of critical concern to especially young children. As the Newsflash has reported in previous issues, young children are very vulnerable to malnutrition, especially those in rural areas; many of them live in the most vulnerable women-headed households in rural areas and are at risk of suffering severe and often irreversible development delays due to lack of food and nutrition during the first two years of their lives. Any initiative that seeks to improve the status and well-being of rural women, especially their right to food security, will have significant benefits for young children and should be supported by the ECD sector.

There are a number of steps that local organisations can take to advance the objectives of the report at home. These include, for example: liaising with the Department of Rural Development to advocate for better rural development policies that ultimately recognise and benefit women-headed households and young children; and the focussed inclusion of the Department of Rural Development in the development and implementation of the next and updated National Integrated Plan for ECD and others. 

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* Click here to view the UN study on the rights of poor people in rural areas