NEWS BANJUL THE GAMBIA (MB)- The government of the Gambia through the ministry of Agriculture, the United Nations food and Agriculture organisation office in Banjul, and Action Aid International The Gambia (AAIG), join the rest of the international community to marked rural women’s day 16 October 2010. The celebration was marked in the forum of match past from Brikama community Radio Station to Brikama Senior School under the theme "Unite Against Hunger".
Several banners and placards were used, most of which made an appeal to both government and international organisations. The messages reads: to end hunger support small holder women farmers’s. women farmers can end hunger, women farmers have the right to own and control land. Improve farming technology for women; can increase and reduce drudgety.
Addressing the gathering, Dr. Kujejatou Manneh Executive Director of AAITG but was quick to say that she believe that day is not just going to be another band of festivities but a moment of reflection, recount the challenges rural women faced over the years and look ahead towards a sustained action and casting solution to hunger and related constraints.
Making it clear to the rural women folk, Dr. manneh said the day is set aside by the United Nations (UN) to focus world attention on the multiple roles of women who, she alloaded are mostly farmers and small entrepreneurs and seeks support ffor them. She stressed that the role of rural women’s in our todays society is overwhelming and their position in t heir daily lives is known to many based on the facts that women does everything under the sun and not much of it is captured in our statistics noting that this is injustice to them. According to Dr. Manneh , all are awre of the challenges this women confronts on a daily basis from down to dust, and for all of their life”. These she added” is the reason enough to emphathise withher situation”, while asking, how much is being revealed about her life threating and precarious conditions she endures through her never ending story? She asked.
The FAO representative Ms Mariatou Faal also lamented on the hardship faced by rural women as they are the mainstay of agricultural sector and food system in many countries but yet she added are the most disadvantages in the world today. In the developing countries she gave the idea of gender bias and gender blindness noting that farmers are still generally perceived as male by policy makers, development partners and agricultural service deliverers.
Women she disclosed were the last to benefit from and negatively affected by prevailing economic growth and development processes. “Poverty food insecurity and environmental degradation are recognized as critical development problems and have been given high priority in the international agenda”.
She said. These problems she noted have a disproportionate negative impact an rural women, due to their inferior souci-economic, legal and political status as well as their critical role as producers and household managers.
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