A/HRC/RES/46/19 supporting the efforts of Member States to achieve the full realization of the right to food, including through its provision of technical assistance to developing countries in support of the implementation of national priority frameworks, Acknowledging the contribution of relevant interagency mechanisms, such as the tripartite collaboration among the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Organization for Animal Health and the World Health Organization, in promoting cooperation and guidance towards safe and sustainable food supplies and practices, Looking forward to the contribution of the Food Systems Summit, to be held in 2021, to the realization of the right to food, 1. Reaffirms that hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human dignity, and therefore requires the adoption of urgent measures at the national, regional and international levels for its elimination; 2. Also reaffirms the right of everyone to have access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, so as to be able to fully develop and maintain his or her physical and mental capacities; 3. Considers it intolerable that, as estimated by the United Nations Children’s Fund, nearly half of all deaths of children under the age of 5 are attributable to undernutrition, which puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections and delays recovery; 4. Expresses deep concern that, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of people estimated to be suffering from acute hunger has doubled, increasing from 130 million in 2019 to 265 million by the end of 2020, while recognizing that the world had already been falling behind on fully realizing the right to food before the onset of the pandemic; 5. Expresses its great concern that, while women contribute more than 50 per cent of the food produced worldwide, they also account for 70 per cent of the world’s hungry, that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger, food insecurity and poverty, in part as a result of gender inequality and discrimination, that in many countries girls are twice as likely as boys to die from malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, and that it is estimated that almost twice as many women as men suffer from malnutrition; 6. Encourages all States to mainstream a gender perspective in food security programmes and to take action to address de jure and de facto gender inequality and discrimination against women, in particular where such inequality and discrimination contribute to the malnutrition of women and girls, including by taking measures to ensure the full and equal realization of the right to food and ensuring that women and girls have equal access to social protection and resources, including income, land and water, and their ownership, and full and equal access to health care, education, science and technology, to enable them to feed themselves and their families, and in this regard stresses the need to empower women and to strengthen their role in decision-making; 7. Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to continue to mainstream a gender perspective in the fulfilment of his mandate, and encourages the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and all other United Nations bodies and mechanisms that address the right to food and food insecurity to integrate and effectively implement a gender perspective in their relevant policies, programmes and activities regarding access to food; 8. Takes note with appreciation of the report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food,1 which highlights thematic areas of focus for the mandate in the upcoming years; 9. Encourages the Special Rapporteur to continue to take into account the links between human rights and trade policy perspectives, food systems and global governance, 1 A/HRC/46/33. 3