A/HRC/7/16 page 22 people, including women and those living in poverty.47 The Voluntary Guidelines of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on the right to adequate food address security of land tenure and the need to enhance access to land in guideline 8B.48 2. Rural areas 79. The increasing trend of migration from rural to urban areas, results in the creation of slums and millions of people forced to live in inadequate and insecure housing conditions. The causes of this often involuntary migration are multiple and need to be addressed. People are forced to move to urban areas to earn a living, as well as obtain access to medical services and education. This results from the loss of means of subsistence due to the failure to give priority to agrarian reform, growing landlessness and indebtedness, the failure to promote rural development, displacement induced by large projects, or State and corporate takeover of farmland. While urbanization worldwide is increasing at an alarming rate, over 3 billion people continue to live in rural areas. The absolute number of rural inhabitants in Africa and Asia is projected to increase over the next 30 years. 80. Given the level of poverty and unemployment in rural areas, many of these people live in distressed housing conditions. Extreme poverty is far more prevalent in rural areas, where about 75 per cent of the world’s poorest people live and depend on agriculture for their survival.49 Thus, a specific focus on rural areas remains essential to improve enjoyment of the right to adequate housing. 3. Natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies 81. Natural disasters result in displacement, loss of housing and livelihood thereby impacting on peoples rights to adequate housing and its congruent rights. Recent natural disasters,50 and their aftermath, have demonstrated the need to integrate human rights standards into prevention, 47 Available at http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/1176_6455_The_Habitat_Agenda.pdf, para. 40 (b). 48 Voluntary Guidelines to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security, adopted by the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in November 2004, available at http://www.fao.org/righttofood/en/highlight_51596en.html. 49 “Reducing poverty and hunger: the critical role of financing for food, agriculture and rural development”, joint report prepared by FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme for the International Conference on Financing for Development available at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/003/y6265e/y6265e.pdf. 50 Including the earthquake in Bam, Iran, in December 2003; the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004; the South Asia earthquake in October 2005; Hurricane Katrina in the United States in August 2005; Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua in October/November 1998; and the earthquake in Peru in August 2007.