International Media Advisory

October 15-16, 2007

Newshook: World Rural Women’s Day (October 15th 2007) and World Food Day (October 16th 2007)

Why: Eleven years ago, governments committed to halving hunger by 2015 at the World Food Summit. At that time, there were 800 million hungry people across the globe. Today, 854 million are hungry. That’s 17% of the world’s population.¹

Women are the world’s primary food producers, yet cultural traditions and social structures often mean that women are more affected by hunger
and poverty than men. Seven out of ten of the world’s hungry are women and girls.²

What: For World Rural Women’s Day, women activists from around the world will protest the world leaders failure to fulfil their commitment to halve hunger by 2015 and call for hunger and the right to food and women’s access to land to be addressed as political priorities.

ActionAid partners and supporters have collected over 20000 messages to the UN member states in 25 countries for World Food Day demanding that governments end hunger and deliver on the right to food.

ActionAid’s HungerFREE campaign, which spans more than 30 countries, calls on governments to deliver on their Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger by 2015, by ensuring that they respect, protect and fulfil the right to food; strengthen corporate regulations and protect poor women’s access to land.

When: October 15th and October 16th 2007

Where: In over 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe


 1. SOFI 2006 (FAO)
 2. World Food programme

Notes to editors:
ActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency working in over 40 countries, taking sides with poor people to end poverty and injustice together. For more information, www.actionaid.org.