A/HRC/43/44/Add.2 67. Child-feeding practices remained suboptimal across all urban areas where there was an urgent need for a multisectoral approach to food and nutrition. These approaches should focus on improving child-feeding practices, promoting the consumption of diversified diets and the safe storage and preparation of food. 68. As a direct consequence of the economic and food crisis in the country, most of the public schools in Harare are no longer able to continue their school feeding programmes. At best, some schools are able to offer one meal a week per classroom. School feeding programmes are vital to prevent school dropouts. During the Special Rapporteur’s visit, a significant proportion of children were out of school owing to financial constraints. The Government should invest more resources to assist vulnerable children and regularly regulate the prices of school fees and levies. It is commendable that the education and health sectors received the highest allocations of 10.7 billion and 6.5 billion Zimbabwe dollars, respectively.16 69. The Special Rapporteur calls upon the Government to fulfil the obligation of the right to food by providing food assistance throughout this period of food insecurity emergency and ensure that social safety nets are established for the most-deprived segments of its population, without any form of discrimination and with respect to the principles of transparency and accountability. 70. However, food assistance does not mean that the human right to food is respected. The right to food is only fulfilled if people are able to access productive resources, or have employment opportunities that enable them to buy available food. Food assistance is only necessary in times of emergency, which is currently the situation in Zimbabwe. D. Sustainability 71. Although cyclical drought episodes have marked the history of Southern African countries, they are further compounded by the natural disasters that are related to the current climate emergency and that are occurring more often, with stronger and long-lasting consequences and damages. In addition to the periodic drought that affected the 2018–2019 agricultural season, in March 2019, Zimbabwe was struck by Cyclone Idai, which caused a flood-induced disaster and left a trail of devastation in the greater part of the eastern highlands and some areas in the southern part of the country, destroying most of the expected harvest. 72. The Government of Zimbabwe should prepare for future droughts and floods carefully and make sure that all mitigation and adaptation measures are developed and implemented with the full and effective participation of those concerned. Disaster risk management, early warning systems, and climate- and ecosystem-friendly production methods are widely available, and could ease the pain when droughts and floods hit the country. 73. Agroecological practices have proved to be successful in many parts of the world, not only in the production of impressive yields but also the promotion of environmentally friendly practices providing livelihoods to local communities and reducing rural poverty. 74. During her visit, the Special Rapporteur had the opportunity to visit the Agroecology School in the village of Shashe, in the province of Masvingo, which offers great inspiration for emancipatory rural initiatives. Hundreds of peasant families share the farming and grazing plots in Shashe, producing a variety of food crops, medicinal plants and roots, and herding livestock. A significant number of those families save, reproduce and reuse their own seeds. Farming is still the most important source of income and livelihood, despite the dryness of the soil, and continuous drought. Shashe peasant families have even been able to sell some of the surplus production, to Masvingo City markets. 75. The Shashe Agroecology School also promotes farmer-to-farmer training programmes that are based on traditional knowledge systems and that work to incorporate the principles of agroecology and food sovereignty. While visiting the school, the Special Rapporteur met with a group of women small-scale farmers who travelled from the province of Mashonaland Central to share their experiences as contract farmers in tobacco plantations 16 12 Zimbabwe Peace Project, “Monthly monitoring report” (November 2019), p. 2.