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WORKING GROUP RECOMMENDATIONS A. Working Group 1 – Natural Resources Development 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.
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