A/HRC/7/5 page 14 recognizes the intergenerational links in nutritional status.26 Underweight and malnourished mothers are more likely to give birth to underweight babies, whose mental and physical capacities may be severely stunted. Régis Debray has called these children “crucified at birth”. These children may never recover and in turn have malnourished babies, passing hunger on through the generations. 34. Despite their key role in ensuring food security, 70 per cent of the world’s hungry are women or girls. Women often face discrimination in gaining secure access to and control over other productive resources, such as land, water and credit, as they are often not recognized as producers or juridical equals. According to FAO, while the proportion of women heads of rural households continues to grow, exceeding 30 per cent in some developing countries, women own less than 2 per cent of all land.27 Despite legal and often constitutional rights in many countries, women still face considerable obstacles to inheritance, purchase and control of land. In many countries, despite formal protection against discrimination, women lack any real access to land, a problem which is exacerbated by a lack of inheritance rights.28 35. Indigenous peoples also face exclusion and discrimination that impact upon their right to food, despite the commitments to protect the economic, social and cultural rights of indigenous peoples set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous peoples encompass approximately 5,000 distinct peoples and some 350 million individuals, the vast majority of whom live in developing countries. It has long been understood that due to long historical processes of colonization, exploitation and political and economic exclusion, indigenous peoples are amongst the most vulnerable to poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Various studies have, over an extended period of time, established that the living standards for indigenous peoples “were at the bottom of the socio-economic scale” and that “indigenous peoples the world over are usually among the most marginalized and dispossessed sectors of society”.29 This problem continues to be a cause for alarm as a result of continued discrimination in access to productive resources. In Guatemala for instance, where the Government has made a major effort to change this situation, it is still clear that indigenous peoples face much higher levels of poverty and malnutrition than the rest of the population. Whereas half of all Guatemalan children under 5 are stunted, malnutrition is much higher amongst indigenous children, with 70 per cent displaying stunted growth as compared with 36 per cent of non-indigenous children.30 26 United Nations Sub-Committee on Nutrition (ACC/SCN), Nutrition Throughout the Life Cycle, 2000. 27 FAO, Women’s right to land: a human right, www.fao.org/News/2002/020302-e.htm. 28 See e.g. E/CN.4/2005/47/Add.1. 29 See A/60/350. 30 See E/CN.4/2006/44/Add.1.