A/HRC/16/63 I. Introduction 1. Hunger, like poverty, is still predominantly a rural problem, and in the rural population, it is those who produce food who suffer disproportionately. In a world in which more than enough is produced to feed the entire world population, more than 700 million people living in rural areas continue to suffer from hunger. Describing this situation in its preliminary study on discrimination in the context of the right to food (A/HRC/13/32), the Advisory Committee identified peasant farmers, small landholders, landless workers, fisher-folk, hunters and gatherers as among the most discriminated and vulnerable groups. 2. Responding to this evidence, the Human Rights Council, in its resolution 13/4, mandated the Advisory Committee to undertake a preliminary study on ways and means to further advance the rights of people working in rural areas, including women, in particular smallholders engaged in the production of food and/or other agricultural products, including from directly working the land, traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities, and to report thereon to the Council at its sixteenth session. 3. A preliminary study was prepared by the drafting group on the right to food, established by the Advisory Committee at its first session and comprising José Bengoa Cabello, Chinsung Chung, Latif Hüseynov, Jean Ziegler and Mona Zulficar,1 for consideration and endorsement by the Committee at its sixth session. The present preliminary study is being submitted by the Committee to the Human Rights Council for consideration at its sixteenth session. II. Identification of discriminated and vulnerable groups working in rural areas A. Overview of the situation of peasants and other people working in rural areas 4. The United Nations Millennium Development Project Task Force on Hunger has shown that 80 per cent of the world’s hungry live in rural areas.2 Of the 1 billion people who suffer from extreme poverty in the world today, 75 per cent live and work in rural areas.3 This situation was compounded by the global food crisis of 2008 and 2009. Today, 50 per cent of the world’s hungry are smallholder farmers who depend mainly or partly on agriculture for their livelihoods. Some 20 per cent of those suffering from hunger are landless families who survive as tenant farmers or poorly paid agricultural labourers who often have to migrate from one insecure, informal job to another; 10 per cent of the world’s hungry live in rural communities from traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities. As much as 70 per cent of the world’s hungry are women and a great majority of them work in agriculture. 1 2 3 The members of the drafting group on the right to food thank Christophe Golay and Ioana Cismas of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights for their important input during the drafting of the present study. Pedro Sanchez and others, Halving Hunger: It Can Be Done, UN Millennium Project 2005, Task Force on Hunger (London, 2005). International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Rural Poverty Report 2001: The Challenge of Ending Rural Poverty, 2001. Available from www.ifad.org/poverty/. 3