A/HRC/9/23 page 11 groups that are food insecure in terms of lack of assets or income, as well as on other grounds. Similarly, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has emphasized the need to strengthen the evidence-base for decision-making, with a particular focus on the nutritional risks faced by women and children, through nutritional and associated health indicators.16 One indicator of the usefulness of performing such a mapping exercise at the early stage of policymaking is the almost complete neglect in the current discussions of the role of fundamental labour rights in the fulfilment of the right to adequate food. Agricultural workers are in a particularly vulnerable position, 60 per cent of them living in poverty in many countries.17 Mapping food insecurity and vulnerability at the national level would help identify the scope of this problem and the development of appropriate policies. Impact assessments can also improve significantly the quality of lawmaking and policymaking. Guideline 17 of the Right to Food Guidelines contains a set of recommendations related to conducting right to food impact assessments, the development for monitoring purposes of process, impact and outcome indicators, and the need to prioritize the monitoring of the food security situation of vulnerable groups and their nutritional status. B. Improving accountability 17. Mapping threats to food security alone does not suffice, however. The human rights approach also leads to an understanding of the requirement of food security in terms of legal entitlements and accountability mechanisms. Ensuring that everyone has access to adequate food is not enough. It is also important that they have so as a matter of right, and that corresponding obligations be imposed on public and private actors who may have an impact on the enjoyment of that right. By ensuring that the hungry and the malnourished have legal claims against those whose actions or inactions have an impact on their situation, this framework creates security, backed by institutional mechanisms. It helps to create the conditions ensuring that people can feed themselves. Ensuring that they can do so as a matter of right rather than as a matter of policy choice is especially important if we take into consideration the capacity to influence decision-makers of the respective groups concerned with food insecurity. It is well known that, in developing countries, small-scale farmers form a large but geographically dispersed group, with little or no access to resources for political lobbying, and face prohibitive transaction costs in the organization of collective action. Urban groups, in contrast, find it easier to mobilize through public protests; so do farmers in industrial economies.18 With such disparity in access to political influence, a rights-based approach constitutes a necessary insurance against the risk of public policies being biased in favour of the most influential and well-organized interest groups, when they should instead address the needs of those at greatest risk, whether in urban or rural populations. 16 See for details UNICEF, Food Prices Increases/Nutrition Security: Action for Children, 4 July 2008. 17 18 http://www.fao-ilo.org/fao_ilo_rural/en/. See The World Bank, World Development Report 2008 - Agriculture for Development, Nov. 2007, at p. 43.