A/HRC/16/40 insecurity and poverty. Implemented in 21 countries over a period of five years (20092013), new procurement modalities will shift a percentage of overall local and regional procurement of WFP from the higher levels of the marketing chain – large-scale traders and processors – to the lower levels, such as farmers’ organizations and small and mediumscale traders. The scheme is a market development programme that seeks to connect smallholder farmers to markets. It offers a unique opportunity to target women, acknowledged as making up the majority of smallholder farmers, to increase women’s agricultural productivity and economic returns and promote their integration in various aspects of the agricultural value chain. Over the five-year lifespan of the pilot, P4P aims to reach at least 500,000 smallholder farmers, increasing their incomes by at least $50 per annum. It is expected that at least half of these farmers will be women. D. Education systems, school meals and other practices for combating hunger and malnutrition in children 80. School meal programmes in both developing and developed countries provide healthy food and improve access to education for children, boost rural economies and help local farmers. In addition, they relieve parents - usually mothers - of the burden of assuring the midday meal and thus provide them with the possibility to seek employment during the day. 81. In 2009, at Imperial College London, the Partnership for Child Development launched a project aimed at helping Governments “to run school meal programmes using locally-sourced food, providing regular orders and a reliable income for local farmers” in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali and Nigeria.85 82. The Food and Nutrition Service of the United States Department of Agriculture administers the National School Lunch programme, which provides daily nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to more than 30.5 million children in more than 101,000 schools.86 Some Governments, including those of Italy, France and South Africa, have made efforts to ensure that their schools offer organic food to their students.87 83. As part of its commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 2007 Bolivia (Plurinational State of) launched the zero malnutrition national programme to combat malnutrition, monitor the nutrition and health of the children and distribute food supplements. As part of the initiative, Plan International, based in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, trained roughly 1,500 women to monitor child nutrition and educate other women about better eating and cooking habits.88 84. An exemplary practice in realizing the right to food of children and children’s rights in general is the Proposed Rights of Children and Young Persons measure adopted in 2010 in Wales (Great Britain). The purpose of the measure is to ensure that Government 85 86 87 88 Imperial College London, “Local farmers in Africa to benefit from school meal programmes”, News release, 15 October 2009, www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_15-10-2009-12-20-4. United States Department of Agriculture, Factsheet: National School Lunch Program, 2009. Available from www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/AboutLunch/NSLPFactsheet.pdf. James Meldrum, “Organic canteen food for better kids”, Australian Organic Journal, Winter 2006. Available from www.bfa.com.au/Portals/0/BFAFiles/x06aoj_008-9.pdf. Julia Velasco Parisaca and Wendy Medina, “Bolivia: mothers teaching mothers to combat malnutrition”, IPS News, 9 January 2009. Available from http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45348. See also Thierry Delvigne-Jean, “‘Model mothers’ work to combat malnutrition in Mozambique”, 22 August 2008. Available from www.unicef.org/infobycountry/mozambique_45308.html. 21