A/HRC/16/40 to land, although they are given the right to till the land and erect a home on a piece of land allocated to the household head.39 33. Family law that restricts a married woman’s capacity to inherit equally, and succession laws that restrict a women’s inheritance rights – mostly of a customary nature, to be found today in much of Africa, some parts of Asia and in Latin America – are two sets of laws and practices producing discriminatory effects in excluding women from claiming land rights.40 Rural households continue to acquire land through inheritance laws that emanate from customary legal regimes currently premised on reaffirming women’s unequal access to and control over land. Because land is mediated through husbands, fathers, brothers or sons, women’s land rights are negotiated within unequal power relationships and are not assumed to be general entitlements. This underscores the importance of legal and cultural reform to restore the balance of power relationships within the family. 2. Women and access to education, employment and health care 34. The role of women in the economy has often been underestimated and their work in agriculture has long been invisible. While policymakers have targeted population, health and nutrition programmes on women in their reproductive roles, they have neglected women as productive agents.41 35. Rural women have the world’s lowest levels of schooling and the highest rates of illiteracy in all developing regions; twice as many women suffer from malnutrition as men, and girls are twice as likely to die from malnutrition as boys. Numerous studies underscore the social costs of rural women’s lack of education and assets, linking them directly to high rates of malnutrition, infant mortality and, in some countries, HIV/AIDS infection. There are also high economic costs: wasted human capital and low labour productivity that stifle rural development and progress in agriculture, and ultimately threaten food security. Discrimination against women in the context of the right to adequate food is a culmination of all other aspects of discrimination that stifle women’s rights to equality and empowerment. E. Discrimination against children 36. More than one third of child deaths worldwide are attributed to malnutrition.42 In 2008, 8.8 million children born across the world died before their fifth birthday. Most of these children lived in developing countries and died from a disease or a combination of diseases that could easily have been treated with the proper nutrition and health care.43 The United Nations Children’s Fund rightly calls child malnutrition the silent emergency, since 39 40 41 42 43 See Tsehainesh Tekle, Women's Access to Land and Property Rights in Eritrea. Towards Good Practice: Women's Land and Property Rights in Situations of Conflict and Reconstruction, 2002; Abby Sebina-Zziwa, Richard Kibombo and Herbert Kamusiime, Patterns and Trends of Women's Participation in Land Markets in Uganda (8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Kampala, Uganda, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, 2002); Laurel L. Rose, “Women’s Strategies for Customary Land Access in Swaziland and Malawi: A Comparative Study”, Africa Today, vol. 49, no.2 (Summer 2002), pp. 123-149. FAO, Gender and Law: Women’s Rights in Agriculture, FAO Legislative Study, rev. 1, Rome 2002. International Food Policy Research Institute, Women: The Key to Food Security (Washington, D.C., August 1995). See WHO Fact File at www.who.int/features/factfiles/nutrition/facts/en/index.html. See www.childinfo.org/mortality.html. 11