A/HRC/31/51 Saharan Africa where indigenous women lack access the same level of rights to land, health, and education as non-indigenous women of this country.9 12. Girls and women suffer from discrimination in relation to their right to food at all stages in life. In many countries, females receive less food than their male partners, due to a lower social status. In extreme cases, a preference for male children may lead to female infanticide, including by deprivation of food.10 Some mothers stop breastfeeding girls prematurely in order to try and get pregnant with a male, which could increase risks of infection and other risks if impure water is used with formula. Similar discrimination applies to older women who tend to be less literate than older men, in many parts of the world; this limits women’s employability, participation and voice in community development activities and makes them less likely to be able to provide for themselves. 13. Structural violence is an under-examined barrier to women’s right to adequate food and nutrition. Gender-based violence, which is a primary form of discrimination, impedes women from engaging in their own right to adequate food and nutrition, and efforts to overcome hunger and malnutrition.11 Some men control women’s behavior and monitor women’s food work in households. A woman’s perceived failure to adequately prepare food and meals is a common justification for “disciplinary” action. 14. Furthermore, girls and adolescent women induced by tradition or forced into child marriage and adolescent pregnancy, suffer the consequences of a high work burden and deprivation of their child rights, including their right to adequate nutrition and education. They are required to perform heavy amounts of domestic work, and are responsible for raising children while still children themselves.12 Adolescent pregnancy is a typical outcome of child marriage and complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the second cause of death for 15-19 year-old girls globally.13 III. Legal barriers 15. The reasons behind the failure to women’s access to adequate food can arguably be linked to two structural disconnects which exist at the crossroads between Women’s Rights and the Right to Food.14 The first disconnect refers to the failure in international law to fully endow women with their right to food. In the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) and the ICESCR, the right to food is accorded to himself and his family. Although the ICESCR General Comment 12 and other documents have underscored the nondiscriminatory intention of the right to food, the archaic language of patriarchy taints the UDHR and treaty language. Concurrently the economic and social rights of the ICESCR are generally reviewed in CEDAW, but not the right to food, which is indirectly touched upon only through a call for rural women. In CEDAW, as in the Convention of the Rights 9 10 11 12 13 14 Alternative report to the democratic republic of Congo’s periodic report to CEDAW (2013)http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/JointNGOsubmission_DRCForTheSes sion55_en.pdf See E/CN.4/2002/83, para.74. Bellows, Jenderedjian. 2016. Chap 3, Violence and the Right to Adequate food and Nutrition, in Bellows et al. pp. 108-161 (108). UNICEF, Early Marriage: A Harmful Traditional Practice, http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Early_Marriage_12.lo.pdf Adolescent Pregnany, WHO Media center, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs364/en/ Bellows, Valente, Lemke, Núñez BdL. 2016. Gender, Nutrition, and the Human Right to Adequate Food: Toward an Inclusive Framework. Routledge. 5