A/HRC/RES/31/10 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; 9. Recognizes the importance of smallholder and subsistence farmers in developing countries, including women and local and indigenous communities, in ensuring food security, reducing poverty and preserving ecosystems, and the need to assist their development; 10. Encourages the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to continue to mainstream a gender perspective in the fulfilment of her 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; 11. Reaffirms the need to ensure that programmes delivering safe, sufficient, nutritious and culturally accepted food are inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities; 12. Encourages States to take steps with a view to progressively achieving the full realization of the right to food for all, and to take steps to promote the conditions for everyone to be free from hunger and, as soon as possible, to enjoy fully the right to food and, where appropriate, to consider establishing appropriate institutional mechanisms and to adopt national plans to combat hunger; 13. Underlines the significance of national government policies and strategies in food production, poverty alleviation and social protection, and the importance of the national efforts made to ensure that women have equal access to State-sponsored benefits, facilities and services; 14. Recognizes the advances made through South-South cooperation in developing countries and regions in connection with food security and the development of agricultural production for the full realization of the right to food, and encourages States to increase such cooperation as a complement to North-South cooperation and to promote triangular cooperation further; 15. Also recognizes the importance of traditional sustainable agricultural practices, inter alia, traditional seed supply systems, including for many indigenous peoples and local communities; 16. Stresses that the primary responsibility of States is to promote and protect the right to food, and that the international community should provide, through a coordinated response and upon request, international cooperation in support of national and regional efforts by providing the assistance necessary to increase food production and access to food, particularly through agricultural development assistance, the transfer of technology, food crop rehabilitation assistance and food aid, ensuring food security, with special attention to the specific needs of women and girls, support for the development of adapted technologies, research on rural advisory services and support for access to financing services, and to ensure support for the establishment of secure land tenure systems; 17. Calls upon States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to fulfil their obligations under article 2, paragraph 1 and article 11, paragraph 2, in particular with regard to the right to adequate food; 18. Calls upon States, individually and through international cooperation and assistance, relevant multilateral institutions and other relevant stakeholders, to take all the measures necessary to ensure the realization of the right to food as an essential human 5