The above helps to explain the state of health of Guatemalan women and girls, who suffer from high rates of protein-calorie malnutrition and vitamin A, iodine and iron deficiency. In the case of pregnant women, this puts them at high risk for giving birth to small, low-birth-weight babies.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics has reported that approximately one in every four women and children under the age of five suffers from mild anaemia, while 15.3 per cent of children under five, and 6.1 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 49, suffer from moderate anaemia.28 An update of the nutritional assessment carried out by the World Bank in January 2003 found global acute protein-calorie malnutrition in 9.3 per cent of the children across the West Bank and Gaza (13.3 per cent in Gaza and 4.3 per cent in the West Bank).29