1.Including a gender-based approach in the
law-making processes, and rendering women more visible in environmental
policies and laws;
2.Developing land management plans that include a
regulatory framework for mining operations which are consistent with
environmental protection practices and standards;
3.Developing organic farming policies, and
agro-ecological farming and native seed promotion techniques to offset climate
change, and warning about the use of toxic agrochemicals;
4.Recommending that each country’s tax scheme be
revised in order to establish that any royalties resulting from mining and
natural resource development operations should be sufficient, and that they
should be allocated to soil and natural resource recovery; and
5.Further strengthening the role of, and the
financial contributions to, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, so that
it may contribute to sustainable development, to social inclusion and to the
preservation of flora through the implementation of joint policies for the
economically sustainable development and protection of the ecosystem.
B.Working Group 2 – Food Security
In light of the irrefutable and conclusive
evidence of a worrying trend developing in the countries of our Hemisphere, and
of the increase in serious problems such as undernourishment, malnutrition,
obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases, all of which are associated with
poor and distorted eating habits, and have become serious public health issues
in all of our countries, we urge men and women parliamentarians and
ParlAmericas member Parliaments to reassert our commitment to food and
nutrition security, as well as to seriously engage in, or continue the
necessary discussions within our Legislatures, in order to enact and further
strengthen new and existing legal instruments that will allow us to directly
address the roots of these evils by exercising our oversight role over the
policies implemented by our Executive branches. Our suggestions, which are the
result of our concerns and of the discussions held at this forum, should also
be extended to all integration processes that are currently developing in Latin
America and the Caribbean.
We
recommend:
1.Encouraging a massive and ongoing
awareness-raising campaign that promotes healthy lifestyles and eating habits,
in line with people’s dietary requirements, and which provides information on
non-advisable foods;
2.Promoting, protecting and respecting women’s and
infants' right to breastfeeding, in accordance with recommendations issued by
the World Health Organization;
3.Establishing regulations to prevent the sale and
advertising of unhealthy foods and products at public schools, and providing
for the availability of and ensuring access to drinking water, so that the
right to food may be guaranteed;
4.Developing mechanisms to implement family,
school and community agriculture programmes that promote the production of safe
and healthy foods, with the additional support of scientific research centres
that are committed to developing knowledge that may in turn be applied to
further strengthening food and nutrition security;
5.Promoting the participation in, and
implementation of, the Codex Alimentarius, which provides for food safety,
ingredient regulation, the trade in excessively processed food (junk food), and
correct and understandable food labelling, with a view to preventing the import
and trade of poor-quality products; and
6.Promoting food and nutrition security as a high
priority for states, in all our respective Parliaments, further underscoring
the need for budget allocations that will guarantee the implementation of
policies and programs designed to fight hunger and food insecurity.
C.Working Group (Group of Women
Parliamentarians Gathering) Recommendations on Food Security and Women’s Rights
1.Reaffirming our political commitment to the
fight against hunger and the Right to Food by fostering regulatory frameworks
that promote human rights, with a special focus on the role that women play in
the fight against hunger and in food and nutrition security. Promoting a
multi-sectoral, cross-cutting inclusion approach in fields including, but not
limited to, labour, health, education, climate change, environment and social
security;
2.Promoting the drafting of legislative and
oversight agendas that deal with the Right to Food, nutrition and food
security, and as well as the development of regulatory frameworks on food in
schools, peasant and family farm agriculture, access to land, climate change,
advertising and the media, universal birth registration, and gender-sensitive
budgets that guarantee women’s sexual and reproductive rights as far as their
social, cultural and political dimensions are concerned;
3.Encouraging Governments to invest in information
gathering and in the development of indicators that will allow public
policymakers to guarantee women’s rights as they relate to food and nutrition
security;
4.Fostering strategic alliances between the Group
of Women Parliamentarians of ParlAmericas and the Parliamentary Front against
Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean in order to promote the inclusion of
human rights in the legislative agenda of the Americas, with a special focus on
women’s rights and on the Right to Food; and
5.Encouraging national agreements among all three
branches of Government that favour gender equality, with a view to promoting
legal systems that may ensure non-discrimination against women in the
administration of justice, women's full exercise of their rights and protection
thereof, as well as food and nutrition security.