A/HRC/25/71 41.3 births per 1,000 live births. Female participation in the labour market is 60.1 per cent compared to 70.6 for men.”16 24. The Government has organized a national programme to combat hunger and malnutrition (Aba Grangou – “Down with hunger”) and a national social assistance programme (Ede Pep – “Helping people”) consisting of several initiatives: Panye Solidarité (60,000 food packages containing local products distributed each month to vulnerable families); Kore Peyizan (supporting 60,000 farmers by providing inputs, 5,000 fishermen by supplying basic equipment and 1,000 farmers by providing training in food seed production techniques); and Kantin Mobil (64,000 hot meals per month distributed to people in urban areas who suffer from food insecurity). Since these are major initiatives, it is important to focus on the long term in order to achieve the goals they set, namely, to halve the number of people suffering from hunger by the end of 2016, to eradicate hunger and malnutrition by 2025, and to reduce the time frames for achieving these goals, as far as possible. 25. In addition, the Strategic Development Plan for Haiti focuses on five priorities: education and human and social development (access to education, health, social services and culture, and the improvement and quality of the habitat); the environment and land use; the economy and employment; energy; the rule of law and democracy. 26. The independent expert hopes that welfare schemes will help to ensure the wellbeing of the most vulnerable. He also hopes that the Strategic Plan will help to meet the basic needs of the majority of the population and to identify the factors perpetuating the deep inequalities that mark Haitian society, in order to neutralize them through vigorous policies with a view to creating and guaranteeing, within a reasonably short time frame, decent living conditions for all. 27. The right to education is a key element in the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights. Besides the importance that education itself has for individual personal development, it also helps to strengthen people’s capacity to access other basic human rights, such as to food, work, housing and health, with greater autonomy. A decisive, ambitious and generous policy to ensure the right to education has a strong multiplier effect on the realization of other human rights, thereby enabling a large sector of the Haitian population to overcome the problem of limited resources and the inability to meet their basic needs. Such a policy should apply, of course, to children and young people, but also to economically active adults and older persons, as part of a continual and sustained effort to ensure the literacy of the entire Haitian population, as rapidly as possible, as well as to provide them with technical or vocational training. It is recommended that initiatives on the right to education considered by the Government, and in particular by the Ministry for human rights and the fight against extreme poverty, should be along these lines, as well as the universal, free and compulsory education programme, “the Ti maman Cheri” programme and a plan to ensure the literacy of the entire illiterate population within the next three years announced to the independent expert by the Government. 28. Special mention should be made of the Office of the Secretary of State for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities which develops initiatives to help the 1 million people living with disabilities to escape their marginality, based on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Haiti in 2009, and the Act on the integration of people with disabilities of 13 March 2012. Despite a modest budget, the Ministry works steadfastly with disability organizations in the different regions of the country and in cooperation with other countries. 16 GE.14-10841 Ibid. See http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/HTI.pdf. 7