Welcoming and opening speech By H.E.

Yukol Limlamthong Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives, Thailand At the Asia and the Pacific Regional High-level Consultation on Gender, Food Security and Nutrition: Ensuring the Other Half Equal Opportunities 24-26 July 2013, Bangkok, Thailand Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of UN, Mr. Hiroyuki Konuma, Senior Adviser, Asian Development Bank, Ms Shireen Lateef, Executive Director, WOCAN, Ms Jeannette Gurung, Honorable Ministers, Excellencies Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my honor to join you today at the meeting on Asia and the Pacific Regional High level Consultation on Gender, Food Security and Nutrition: Ensuring the Other Half Equal Opportunities, I wish to extend my deep appreciation to the organizers for this important gathering. The presence of so many high level officials and eminent experts testifies to the high level of importance we give to the topic that we are going to discuss for these three days. This is an important meeting that reflect the strength of our commitment to promoting gender equality and achieving food security and nutrition. Empowering women can be a powerful tool and can make a major contribution to economic growth and sustainable development. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, The government of Thailand is aware of the importance of women and gender equality. Nowadays, there are many problems encountered by women including, double standard treatment, less social opportunities, domestic violence and lack of opportunity to show their potentials. To cope with these issues, the government has introduced a crucial and urgent policy by establishing "The Thai Women Empowerment Fund" in 2012, with the purpose to raise the potential of women in every domain. The fund serves as a revolving funding source for women to borrow with low interest, or without interest. The money will be used to develop their potential and occupations, promote their leadership, and ease their problems. As a result, women would benefit from better living standard in terms of education, wealth healthcare services and stability. For the agricultural sector, the Government of Thailand through the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives has been supporting women by providing training courses in agriculture, group activities, skilled development and the promotion of savings, so that they become efficient and skilled workers and increase their income and living standards.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Nutrition is a function of food intakes and health status. Food intake, however is influenced by food availability that is affected by food production. As being defined by FAO, food security means access to adequate amounts of nutritious food for all people at all times. It means that food security cannot be separated from nutrition security. Poverty is one of the key underlying causes of malnutrition. To alleviate the poverty, it requires improvement of food security. Thailand has experienced in reductions of poverty and malnutrition for decades. Lesson learnt are conducive to the launching of the strategic framework for food management as the direction of food security scheme. Thailand now is targeting not only to be the world food supplier but also reforming the poor to be self sufficiency economy. I am pleased to inform you that Thailand has already achieved the targets of both World Food Summit and MDGs in reducing the number and proportion of undernourished people by half before 2015. Beyond the government commitments, the Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy initiated by His Majesty the King and the School Lunch Programme in remote areas established by Her Royal Highness Sirindhorn are the fundamental key factors for our success. However, there is still much work to be done with more efforts in improving legal institutions, increasing productive resources for women and increasing womens ability to actively participate in the development process. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to confirm that the Government of Thailand is committed in empowering women and achieving gender equality, especially in agriculture sector. I wish the participants a very fruitful and productive discussion and hope that you have an enjoyable and memorable stay in Bangkok. Thank you.