The WFF Youth Assembly launches a global online survey: Ensuring equal access to justice for young women in agrifood systems

20/11/2025

The World Food Forum (WFF) Global Youth Action Initiative (Youth Initiative) is calling on young leaders, student networks, NGOs, WFF National Youth Chapters and all youth-led platforms to share their perspectives on how to ensure equal access to justice for young women in agrifood systems. Inputs collected through the global online survey and online consultations will contribute to the WFF Youth Assembly’s submission to the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) Global Youth and Adolescents Recommendations, coordinated by UN Women.

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(Deadline: 5 December 2025, 23:59 CET)

Across agrifood systems, young women continue to face systemic barriers that weaken their rights, opportunities and long-term prospects. The FAO report Status of Women in Agrifood Systems (2023) shows that many young women are concentrated in informal, low-paid and unsafe agricultural work, often without contracts, social protection or avenues to report exploitation. These vulnerabilities are reinforced by heavy unpaid care responsibilities and limited access to information, financial services and gender-based violence (GBV) support.

In parallel, the FAO report Status of Youth in Agrifood Systems (2025) highlights persistent gender inequalities in land rights and tenure security, with young women inheriting land later, or not at all and facing discriminatory norms that hinder their access to productive assets, decision-making spaces and justice mechanisms when their rights are violated. These inequalities limit economic independence and make it harder for young women to fully participate in sustainable transformation of agrifood systems.

This call builds on the WFF Youth Assembly’s 2025 recommendations paper Empowering Young Women in Agrifood Systems, which identified inequitable legal and policy frameworks and limited participation in decision-making as key barriers to gender equality.

The upcoming online consultation on 27 November will invite young people to discuss the drivers of unequal access to justice, including unsafe and informal work conditions, barriers to land ownership, discriminatory laws and practices and limited access to legal aid and GBV services and to propose actionable solutions rooted in their lived experiences.

The final set of inputs will be compiled by the WFF Youth Policy Board to inform UN Women’s CSW70 Global Youth and Adolescents Recommendations and will be presented at CSW70 in March 2026, as well as at other key fora, including the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development.

Share your insights and be part of the change.

Participants are encouraged to review the resources below before contributing: