A/HRC/RES/22/9 of the right to food and ensuring that women have equal access to social protection and to resources, including income, land and water and their ownership, as well as full and equal access to education, science and technology, to enable them to feed themselves and their families; 7. Recognizes the importance of smallholder farmers in developing countries, including women and local and indigenous communities, in ensuring food security, reducing poverty and preserving ecosystems, and the need to assist their development; 8. Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to continue to mainstream a gender perspective in the fulfilment of his mandate, and encourages the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and all other United Nations bodies and mechanisms that address the right to food and food insecurity to integrate into and effectively implement a gender perspective and a human rights perspective in their relevant policies, programmes and activities regarding access to food; 9. Reaffirms the need to ensure that programmes delivering safe and nutritious food are inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities; 10. Encourages States to take steps with a view to progressively achieve the full realization of the right to food for all, and to take steps to promote the conditions for everyone to be free from hunger and, as soon as possible, to enjoy fully the right to food and, where appropriate, to consider establishing appropriate institutional mechanisms and to adopt national plans to combat hunger; 11. Underlines the significance of national government policies and strategies on food production and poverty alleviation; 12. Recognizes the advances made through South-South cooperation in developing countries and regions in connection with food security and the development of agricultural production for the full realization of the right to food, and encourages States to increase such cooperation as a complement to North-South cooperation; 13. Stresses that the primary responsibility of States is to promote and protect the right to food and that the international community should provide, through a coordinated response and upon request, international cooperation in support for national and regional efforts by providing the assistance necessary to increase food production, particularly through agricultural development assistance, the transfer of technology, food crop rehabilitation assistance and food aid ensuring food security, with special attention to the specific needs of women and girls; 14. Calls upon States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to fulfil their obligations under article 2, paragraph 1 and article 11, paragraph 2 thereof, in particular with regard to the right to adequate food; 15. Calls upon States, individually and through international cooperation and assistance, relevant multilateral institutions and other relevant stakeholders, to take all the measures necessary to ensure the realization of the right to food as an essential human rights objective, and to consider reviewing any policy or measure that could have a negative impact on the realization of the right to food, particularly the right of everyone to be free from hunger, before instituting such a policy or measure; 16. Stresses that improving access to productive resources and investment in rural development is essential for eradicating hunger and poverty, in particular in developing countries, through, inter alia, the promotion of investments in appropriate, small-scale irrigation and water management technologies in order to reduce vulnerability to droughts, as well as in programmes, practices and policies to scale up agroecological approaches; 4