Rights begin in the field: UfM and CIHEAM bring justice for Mediterranean women farmers to the heart of International Women’s Day

• The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and CIHEAM will co-host a high-level webinar on 5 March 2026, ahead of the International Women’s Day (8 March), focusing on women’s access to justice in rural areas and agrifood systems. The event is anchored in the IWD 2026 theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls” and aligns with the United Nations International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, recognising women farmers as key drivers of agricultural development.
• Speakers include senior voices from the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Ministry of Agriculture of Lebanon, the American University of Beirut and the Ethical Trading Initiative.
• In 2025, women globally hold only 67 per cent of the legal rights afforded to men. At the current pace of progress, closing this gap would take an estimated 286 years – underscoring the urgency of accelerating both the adoption and the enforcement of legal and policy reforms.
• Out of 190 economies assessed by the Women, Business and the Law report 2026, only 68
  economies across regions have adopted with legal reforms strengthening women’s economic opportunities between 2023 and 2025. Spani Egypt, Jordan and Algeria among them.
• The UfM reaffirms its commitment, grounded in the 5th Ministerial Declaration on Women (Madrid, 2022), to advancing gender equality across agriculture, as well as climate, trade, the digital transition and regional governance, through a year-long programme of actions across the region.

Barcelona, 26 February 2026. Across the Mediterranean, women grow the food that feeds families and communities. They tend the land, manage the herds, run the market stalls and come home to shoulder the household responsibilities that rarely appear in any economic statistic. Yet, in many countries, the law does not protect them enough: as workers, as landowners, as cooperative members or as claimants when those rights are violated. In 2026, the question is not whether women are central to Mediterranean food systems. It is whether the law treats them as if they are.

On 5 March 2026, ahead of International Women’s Day, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and CIHEAM will co-host a high-level webinar, bringing together policymakers, legal experts, rural advocates and women practitioners from across the Euro-Mediterranean region to address one of the most decisive conditions of a just food system: women’s access to justice.

Speakers including Elisenda Estruch (ILO Rural Economy Specialist), Gloria Abouzeid (Director General of Cooperatives, Ministry of Agriculture, Lebanon), Ella Frankel (Ethical Trading Initiative) and Dr. Zeina Jallad (American University of Beirut) will discuss how to advance women’s legal rights and access to justice in agrifood systems – from land tenure and cooperative governance to labour protections and grievance mechanisms – and what policy and institutional reforms are needed to accelerate change across the Euro-Mediterranean region.

“Women are central to Mediterranean food systems – as farmers, processors, traders, innovators and custodians of traditional knowledge. Yet, in too many countries, the legal and institutional frameworks that should protect and enable them continue to fail them. Today we are not marking a day. We are marking a direction,” said Petra Kežman, UfM Deputy Secretary General for Human Development.

In the Mediterranean, the stakes are acute. As the region confronts overlapping crises – climate stress, food insecurity and the fragility of rural livelihoods – the lack of inclusion of women in legal, economic and institutional systems does not only harm them. It weakens the food systems the entire region depends on.

This webinar builds directly on the Regional Stakeholder Dialogue convened in Cairo in October 2025, where 80 participants – including 50 women entrepreneurs and cooperative leaders from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia – mapped barriers and co-designed a regional agenda. That gathering produced the Joint UfM-CIHEAM Declaration and a Regional Agenda on Innovation for Women Entrepreneurs in the Agro-Food Value Chain, a concrete roadmap to strengthen women’s access to finance, markets and decision-making across the sector. The webinar advances that mandate in the days leading into International Women’s Day.

This event opens a year-long UfM programme of concrete actions for gender equality. Coming milestones include the launch of the Regional Agenda on Gender and Food Security; the Women Leading Change programme in Mediterranean universities; and the Women, Climate, Peace and Security Report to be presented at the COP31 Mediterranean Pavilion in Antalya, Türkiye.

More information

• Webinar registration link
• Hashtags: #UfM4Women – #IWD2026