Today, WRC is commemorating World Food Day. Every year on October 16, this day marks the founding of the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), a specialized agency that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. But World Food Day also honors something bigger: the international community’s commitment to achieving the global food security and sustainability necessary to ensure humanity’s shared food future.
As an organization focused on improving the lives and protecting the rights of women, children, and youth displaced by conflict and crisis, WRC looks at food security and sustainability through an often-overlooked lens. What we see is a world in which women and children are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity:
- There is a gender gap in hunger—far more women experience food insecurity than men. Of the 343 million people who are extremely hungry in the world right now, nearly 60% are women and girls.
- Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of hunger. Nearly half of all deaths of children under five years old are linked to undernutrition.
- Evidence suggests that food insecurity can be a key driver of child marriage, as well as a consequence of it.
- Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic pose additional food shortage threats to women and children already experiencing food insecurity.
- In conflicts including the wars in Gaza and Sudan, forced starvation has been used as a weapon of war that especially impacts women and children.
- The United States’ cuts to food aid both domestically and internationally could leave millions of women and children hungry in the coming year.
As our Executive Director, Sarah Costa, said in a 2021 op-ed, “Ending food insecurity requires us to understand that gender inequality is a major contributing factor. Deconstructing the barriers to women’s ability to respond to crises and increasing their access to and control over resources is critical to attaining food security. Women and girls must take part in the decisions about and the design of solutions for the challenges that impact their lives and the lives of their communities.”
With global income inequality, climate change impacts, and human displacement levels all growing, this is truer now than ever. Today, WRC reaffirms our commitment to ensure that displaced and migrant women and children are both a focus of, and key participants in, the conversation around food security and sustainability. When they lead the way, a better food future follows, for all of us.