CEDAW/C/1996/3/Add.4 English Page 7 nutritional status and for drawing up national plans of action for nutrition. With the World Health Organization (WHO), the Division held expert consultations on human nutrition requirements with specific emphasis on disaggregating requirements by sex, childbearing and lactation status, and other genderrelevant variables. The Division also contributed to gender-specific studies of food toxicoses, and is producing guidelines for involving women in the participatory formulation of nutrition projects. Traditional foodstuffs in household food security 24. The Division also promotes household food security in another way: through greater attention to wild or domestic underutilized traditional foodstuffs, whose identification, use and preservation are nearly always the purview of rural women. These foodstuffs are particularly important in food-deficient countries for reducing vitamin and mineral deficiencies by diversifying diets and for improving the economic status of poor households, especially women. Traditional foods are also often multipurpose, providing for such needs as medicines and dyes. In the aggregate they exploit the full range of localized agro-ecological niches and are almost always more tolerant of or resistant to drought, pests or disease than introduced crops. Increased recognition of such unique biological resources also pays bonuses in the form of added incentives to maintain biodiversity, in which women play a key role. 25. A Food Policy and Nutrition Division project in the Niger, for example, emphasizes the consumption of indigenous foods rich in vitamin A to combat blindness and other deficiency diseases. Women organize in groups to learn new solar drying techniques and to receive training in a number of supporting areas, including nutrition, literacy and access to and management of credit. The Food Policy and Nutrition Division also works with vendors of traditional street foods throughout Africa, where 80 per cent of such vendors are women. B. Gender-analysis training 26. If women are to benefit significantly from and participate in development, specialists and policy makers must be sensitized to gender issues, and all member nations’ and the United Nations system’s capacity to design and execute gender-responsive projects, programmes and policies expanded. This involves training at various levels. 1. The socio-economic and gender analysis training programme 27. As reported in the last progress report, FAO, along with UNDP and the World Bank, initiated the socio-economic and gender analysis programme. The programme is continuing as a collaborative effort of FAO, ILO, the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), UNDP and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), with the assistance of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of the Netherlands. /...