BySARAH BEN-NUN, JERUSALEM POST STAFF

Yael Rubinstein, the Israeli Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome, launched on Thursday an initiative to empower women in the UN's hunger-fighting agencies worldwide.

The launch event included some 40 women who are heading UN-based hunger fighting organizations in Rome, pulling representation from the US, France, Britain, Italy, Kenya and Angola.

At the event, Rubinstein emphasized the importance of drawing and keeping women in these circles of hunger-fighting within the larger UN framework. She also stressed the importance of women reaching key positions, and expressed the hope that the women's network would assist in developing women's leadership in the UN and beyond.

The Israeli mission to Rome worked specifically with three UN agencies headquartered in the city: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) which fights hunger worldwide, the World Food Program (WFP) the largest hunger-fighting humanitarian agency according to its Twitter bio, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a humanitarian UN agency specifically focused on fighting hunger in rural communities.

In 2015, the UN General Assembly set a series of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 benchmark global events that were meant to propel the world to a more sustainable future by 2030. The hunger-related UN agencies are dedicated to the 2nd SDG, to "end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture."

Another Israeli woman who took part in Thursday's event was Professor Noga Kornfeld-Shor, the head scientist of the Environmental Protection Ministry. Shor, who will be representing Israel at a pre-summit to the UN Food Systems Summit that is set to take place on July 26-28, spoke about the importance of women advancing in research and academia, and about the need to change a prevalent belief among young girls that science is for boys alone.