WASHINGTON, DC, United States (CMC) – The Organization of American States (OAS) has congratulated Caribbean countries for the approval of the Declaration for the Rights of All Women, Adolescents and Girls in Rural Areas of the Americas.

The hemispheric body said the declaration, adopted at the 53rd General Assembly, notes that between 2024 and 2034 the Inter-American Decade for the Rights of All Women, Adolescents and Girls in Rural Settings of the Americas will be observed.

“The region owes a historical debt to rural women, who mostly live in extreme poverty, far from educational and health centres and other social services, and must raise their children alone,” the OAS said in a statement.

It said that in Latin America and the Caribbean around 58 million women live in the countryside “doing fundamental work for food security and caring for the planet”, adding “they preserve and transmit traditional knowledge about health, cultivation and people’s care.

“Despite the evidence of its relevance, barely 30 per cent have access to some form of land ownership. Most live in precariousness and labour informality and extreme poverty. They are at the bottom of the social ladder and are absent from decision-making positions.”

The OAS said the decision to establish the Inter-American Decade is “a crucial step because it seeks to build and execute an effective action plan for access to rights, services, and prevention, eradication, and reparation measures for all forms of exclusion, discrimination, and violence suffered by women, adolescents, and girls living in rural settings.”

It said the decade also seeks to position them at the centre of the national and regional discussion on rural development policies.

“The action plan for the decade must be intersectoral in nature, involve civil society, states, the various instances of the OAS and the Inter-American human rights system,” the OAS said.

It said its coordination will be the responsibility of the Inter-American Commission of Women, which since the beginning of 2023 began a process of dialogue with rural women in the region and established a table that promotes the construction of alliances and strategies for the advancement of their rights.

“The Inter-American Decade for the Rights of All Women, Adolescents, and Girls in Rural Settings in the Americas is a crucial political-regional event because it represents the achievement of a struggle by women and rural women’s organisations in the region, and because for the first time it incorporates at the top of the Inter-American agenda the construction of a work plan that addresses the historical and urgent debt owed to rural women,” the OAS said.