15 October 2014: This year’s International Day of Rural Women emphasized that rural women are critical for achieving the transformational economic, environmental and social changes required for sustainable development. In a statement marking the day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said rural women are essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a universal climate agreement, and urged addressing the discrimination and deprivation that rural women suffer, including lack of access to land, markets, finance, social protection and services.

Ban said access to productive agricultural and natural resources empowers women, who then can contribute to alleviating hunger and boosting their communities’ ability to cope with the effects of climate change, land degradation and displacement.

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka underscored that: rural women must be at “the heart of all development efforts”; gender inequality in land and other productive resources is intrinsically related to women’s poverty and exclusion; women’s rights to access, use, control and ownership of land and other productive resources are essential to reverse this trend; and rural women’s voices must be heard in decision-making processes. UN Women highlighted its partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), ‘Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women,’ which engages with governments to develop and implement laws that promote equal rights. UN Women has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) on including women and girls in disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies, under the ‘Building Safety and Resilience in the Pacific Project.’ [UN Website for International Day of Rural Women] [UN Press Release] [Statement of UN Secretary-General] [Statement of Executive Director of UN Women] [SPC Press Release on MoU]