2025-2026 engagements

In 2025, the World Food Forum Youth Assembly led three consultations alongside an online survey to ensure broader and more inclusive youth participation. This global consultative process engaged over 10 000 young people from over130 countries to draft youth-led recommendations on the empowerment of young women in agrifood systems. The resulting global Youth Recommendations Empowering Young Women in Agrifood Systems was launched at the High-Level Political Forum in 2025 with the support of UN Women and the UN Youth Office and offered a comprehensive outlook of youth priorities on young women’s empowerment in agrifood systems, ranging from access to education opportunities to care economy and representation in decision-making.

Ground in such global priorities, in 2026, in alignment with the priority theme of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), “ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including through inclusive and equitable legal systems, the elimination of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and the removal of structural barriers,” the Youth Assembly organized thematic follow-up consultations to gather more detailed, geographically grounded and practical recommendations on the issues of access to justice from an agrifood perspective.

The consultation methodology combined an online consultation exploring the three major topics of informal and precarious agricultural work, gender-related barriers to land ownership and tenure security and cross-cutting themes on intersectionally responsive access to justice in agrifood systems with a global survey. The outcome of the consultation directly fed into the CSW70 Global Youth and Adolescent High-Level Priorities coordinate by UN Women.

2026-2027 engagements

The Youth Policy Recommendations on Access to Justice for Young Women in Agrifood Systems as an outcome of the consultative process will be presented in March 2026 at the 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

In 2027, in alignment with the priority theme of the 71st Commission on the Status of Women, the WFF Youth Assembly will continue providing an agrifood systems perspective to youth-led recommendations submitted to CSW and convened by UN Women. It will also ensure thematic follow-up on the global youth recommendations on young women’s empowerment (WFF Youth Assembly, 2025), while continuing to amplify the informed opinions and lived experiences of young women across agrifood systems value chains in global governance discussions on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Key activities include

• Dissemination of Youth Assembly key messages on land rights and equitable access to land at the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development +20 (ICARRD+20).
• Active youth participation in the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), including the presentation and promotion of youth policy recommendations on access to justice for young women in agrifood systems.
• Policy guidance to national youth chapters of WFF on the implementation of youth recommendations on empowering young women in agrifood systems.
• Targeted advocacy efforts in support of the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026.
• A dedicated capacity-building and leadership workshop for young women and girls during the World Food Forum 2026 flagship event.