Protection of Fundamental Rights
We strive to guarantee people a full, dignified and just life with respect for their rights. We adopt an approach based on Human Rights protection and community participation.
We want a fairer and more sustainable world for all and therefore work every day to overcome the causes and consequences of inequality, helping people and communities in need to find the right solutions to problems.
ActionAid believes that without ending the conditions of marginalisation and oppression in which many women live, the results of the fight against poverty will be illusory.
We implement our projects to tackle the conditions of inequality, abuse, violence and prejudice that prevent women from determining their own lives and the development of their communities.
We work so that girls, girls and women can increase their confidence in their abilities in a process of empowerment that starts with the awareness that they have inviolable rights.
We support women’s groups and movements so that their demands can be transformed into appropriate legislative and legal instruments. ActionAid works by encouraging women’s leadership in public institutions to achieve concrete changes in legislation where adequate protections are still lacking.
We run awareness-raising campaigns against prejudice that leads to discrimination, for equal treatment in the workplace and access to education, land and civil rights.
The right to food is so important that it was included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as early as 1948. In the wake of the Millennium Goals, in 2016, through the “Zero Hunger” goal contained in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the United Nations declared its intention to put an end to all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030. The heads of state and government and the UN agencies have been discussing hunger and malnutrition for decades: identifying causes, proposing solutions, allocating money, yet the situation only worsens.
According to the 2018 United Nations report on food security and nutrition, hunger affects 821 million people worldwide, which is equal to 11% of the world’s population. The figure is increasing compared to the past due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks. More than half of those suffering from hunger are located in Asia, but serious problems of food insecurity and malnutrition also persist in Africa and Latin America.
Hunger stems from the inability of men and women to have access to resources to produce enough food for their survival or to earn enough money to buy it.
Yet the world has enough resources to feed the current population: so why is hunger still a daily reality for millions of people.
For ActionAid, hunger is the “product” of improper choices by companies, governments and international organisations, as well as a lack of political will. Harmful policies, which consider food a mere market product and not a right, mean that the hungriest and the poorest are, incredibly, farmers and agricultural workers.
To combat this situation effectively we must: remove existing inequalities relating to the control of land, water, pastures, forests and seeds; counteract violations of the rights of farmers and workers; ask for more public investment in agriculture and rural development.
Worldwide, there are about 750 million adults who can neither read nor write. Most of them, about two thirds of the total, are women. But illiteracy is a problem that does not spare boys and girls either. It is estimated that, worldwide, some 617 million children and adolescents cannot read, write or perform the most basic mathematical operations despite the fact that two thirds of them attend school.
Education is a fundamental right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and an important tool in the fight against poverty. The Incheon Declaration, a document in which the international community outlines an agenda for education that is holistic, ambitious and doesn’t leave anyone behind, was drafted during the 2015 World Education Forum. The declaration is based on the assumption that, besides being a public good, education is a fundamental right that allows all the other economic, social and cultural rights to be achieved. According to the Forum, sustainable development is really only possible through transversal efforts that start with an education that addresses the interdependence between environment, economy and society.
The United Nations also took the opportunity to include in its Sustainable Development Goals the completion, for all boys and girls, of cycles of primary and secondary education and that they should be free, fair and of a high standard.
In many countries, you have to pay to go to elementary school and it is too expensive for poor people, the quality of education is still poor due to a lack of trained teachers and in many communities it is simply not accessible due to their distance from schools.
ActionAid believes that poverty and illiteracy are closely linked and that access to education is essential for eradicating poverty and for the full exercise of other rights: with an education, people are more likely to find work, participate in their communities, claim the rights they are denied and work for the change they need.
