A/HRC/13/32 poverty.17 Recent trends have shown that, for the poor living in urban areas, a dependence on cash-based incomes increases together with a decrease in reliance on surrounding natural resources.18 Access to food-producing resources and access to healthy ways of acquiring, developing and consuming staples are crucial for food to be secured by the disenfranchised themselves. 30. Countries continue to assume that food security is equivalent to food shortage. African states, for example, continue to spend a large share of resources on meeting the needs of the urban poor rather than investing in productive sectors, such as agriculture and the generation of off-farm and urban employment.19 The pursuit of social goods should not be separated from the management of public expenditures. Moreover, while Government provision of food aid through social safety nets is usually administered equally to households that reach certain poverty lines, it does not address discrimination stemming from inequalities within the households. Lastly, the recent food crisis, which affected disproportionately the urban poor, showed that the need to avoid the negative impact on local production and consumer prices of imported food aid by reducing dependency on the latter, providing a mechanism to manage price volatility and encouraging the distribution of crops from surplus regions to deficit regions. D. Discrimination against women 31. The intersection between women's rights and the right to food provides a rich overview of a number of interrelated dimensions of discrimination against women related to access to land, property and markets, which are inextricably linked to access to education, employment, health care and political participation. On a global scale, women cultivate more than 50 per cent of all food grown.20 Women nonetheless account for 70 per cent of the world’s hungry and are disproportionately affected by malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity. Governments are not living up to their international commitments to protect women from discrimination, as the gap between de jure equality and de facto discrimination continues to persist and resist change. 1. Rural women, access to land, production and markets 32. Women’s access to control and ownership of land or property are crucial for the purpose of strengthening their security and livelihood. It is important to understand the multiple factors - laws, inheritance, marital status and agrarian reform policies - that impede women's equal access to land and the way these affect women by virtue of their gender at the level of individual, community and nation.21 Despite representing the majority of the agricultural workforce and production, women are estimated to have access to/control 5 per cent of land globally.22 The World Food Program estimates that de facto female-headed households form an estimated 25 per cent of total rural households signalling the 17 18 19 20 21 22 M. T. Ruel et al., “Urban challenges to nutrition security: a review of food security, health and care in the cities”, Food Consumption and Nutrition discussion paper No. 51, IFPRI, 1998. L. Haddad , “Are urban poverty and undernutrition growing? Some newly assembled evidence”, 27 World Development 11 (1999). S. Fan et al., “Investing in African agriculture to halve poverty by 2015”, ReSAKSS Working Paper No. 25. www.globalissues.org.com/article/166/womens-rights#LackofProgress. FAO, Gender issues in land tenure, “High level consultation on rural women and information”, Rome, 4-6 October 1999. See www.uneca.org/adfvi/documents/ConceptnoteSecuringWomenAccess-to-land.pdf. 9