EMPOWERING WOMEN WILL END HUNGER

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Every year, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provides more than eleven million schoolgirls with food to help keep them in education, and around three million vulnerable women with special nutritional support. This year, on International Women’s Day (March 8), WFP celebrated how empowering women could boost global efforts to end hunger.


“Giving women the power to make choices over their lives is one of the first steps towards a world with zero hunger,” said WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin. “In every country where WFP works, women are front and centre in programmes to tackle the problems of food insecurity and under-nutrition. We work with women farmers, traders, nutrition workers, school cooks and we serve millions of schoolgirls, pregnant women and nursing mothers.”









This year’s United Nations theme for International Women’s Day stresses that “Equality for women is progress for all.” One example of a WFP programme that focuses on women’s advancement is Purchase for Progress, or P4P, an initiative that helps smallholder farmers, particularly women, become competitive players in the marketplace by producing food for sale and use in WFP programmes.

In Sri Lanka, WFP helps address women’s empowerment through various activities; school feeding, food assistance for vulnerable female-headed households,  food-for-assets programmes that boost resilience and mother-and-child health and nutrition programmes, using cash, vouchers or food. In providing assistance WFP targets women IDPs, returnees and those from newly-resettled families in the former conflict-affected Northern Province.  Additionally, WFP supports smallholder farmers by buying locally and by helping them gain access to markets.

In Sri Lanka, WFP helps address women’s empowerment through various activities; school feeding, food assistance for vulnerable female-headed households,  food-for-assets and other programmes

“We need to invest more in educating rural women and empowering them economically to enable them to  provide adequate nutritious food for themselves and their families,” said Ismail Omer, Representative and Country Director of WFP Sri Lanka.

A report by WFP’s sister agency the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that closing the gender gap in agriculture by giving women farmers more resources could bring the number of hungry people in the world down by more than an estimated 100 million people.  The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011 report found that women lacked access to land, credit, tools and seeds that could boost agricultural production.

WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. On average, WFP reaches more than 90 million people with food assistance in 80 countries each year.