of the children to such an extent that the health, safety or security, nutrition and education of such other party or such children, as the case may be, is adversely affected, that neglect constitutes notifiable family misconduct and any of the persons named in section 88 (3) shall be under a duty to report the neglect to the Minister responsible for social welfare. 238 The Act also charges the court with the protection of children in that a marriage which has broken down and is being dissolved should be brought to an end with minimum distress to any affected children. The court shall also have the power to award custody in favour of either of the parents based on the best interests of the child. Article 13 - Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 239 The National Gender Policy of 2015 indicates that food security is a major concern at household and national level in both rural and urban areas. In most cases, the woman has to fetch food to feed the family. This results into school drop outs especially on the girl child to support their mothers’ efforts in search of food. The direct result of food shortage is malnutrition, particularly amongst women and children, which is a major cause of maternal. In view of that, the Policy seeks to ensure that women and other vulnerable groups have access to and control over agricultural productive resources, technologies and markets for cash crops, food and nutrition security. The Government through the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development implements a Farm Input Subsidy Programme across the country. The programme targets fulltime smallholder Malawian farmers that are resource poor of all gender categories. 240 Section 28 of the Constitution recognises equal ownership of property rights of men and women. Again, Section 24 provides that a woman has the rightto acquire and maintain rights in property, independently or in association with others, regardless of their marital status. The Customary Land Act 2016 guarantees a women’s access to land in that an application for a customary estate from a woman, or a group of women shall be treated 99

Select target paragraph3