Tape #351 - Women and Food Security in Emergencies

 

 

In a session called women and food security due in complex emergencies.   I know that there are is lot of dialogue that will go on, so we want to make sure that since this session is being recorded you use the microphone. This is short room so just come up to the microphone when you have a question.  The panel here will be able to or make some indication that you need to ask a question so they can get the microphone to you.  We should have enough cord there to get started.

The intent of this panel is to review the circumstance of farming women under certain crisis and transitional situation and to provide the best practices.  We have a couple of people that we have that will be with us today, and we are going to ask each panel member to introduce themselves and their organization they are with and a little bit about what they bring to the panel today.   Ok.  They’ll introduce the next person.  Any questions will be asked afterwards.

Good Afternoon my name is Thore Cedarstrom, I’m the Food Security Policy Advisor for Save The Children U.S.  in the division of humanitarian response.  Save the children is among several U.S. private volunteer organizations that is involved in the relief, transitions and development activities in the area of food security.  And uh I’ll pass it to my colleague.

Good Afternoon, I am Jennifer Deck.  I am the Program Officer for our children in crisis programs at Save the Children. 

I’m Patricia Bonard and I am an independent consultant.  I am an agricultural economist and I work with both developmental situations and some work in relief and transition.

Steve Hansch with Congressional Hunger Center and I am notable for not being an employee of Save The Children.

Just wanted to give an introduction to this session very briefly and start of by noting that the topic, I feel is a very timely topic, there seems to be with the ending of the cold war in its aftermath of proliferation of complex emergencies around the world and it is particularly noteworthy that we focus on issue of women in these circumstances because statistics, studies show that women are primarily affected by these events.  Comprising some of 70 to 80 percent of these people being uprooted by these events.  So in this session, (not recording, alright good ok…

There are varying definitions of complex emergencies, but for our purposes here in terms of food security we are looking at famine, hunger, that is resulting snot so much from natural disasters but from human choices.  We are looking at particularly concerned with issues such as civil violence, uprooted people and failing states.  These are conditions that lead to murder, starvation, to hidden hunger such as vitamin and mineral deficiencies and all the ensuing diseases that are a consequence.

Complex emergencies have specific consequences of concern for the private voluntary organization community in terms of food insecurity where we have issues of [warning fashion] stealing food from one another destroying crops, conscripting often times young children as soldiers, or just flat out killing farmers.  For our purposes here today, we are defining food security here as well as simple terms of quantity and quality of food for members of households and communities for an active and healthy life.  And in complex emergencies, the violence can often times not only disrupt the agriculture cycle and farming activities, but it destroys peoples as well in environment and infrastructure.  Also for the nature of the work that we do, complex emergencies also impede the delivery of response,  it's one thing to respond to a drought (a natural disaster), access is not a problem but when you are trying to delivery services and respond to peoples needs in complex emergencies just having access and getting resources in is very challenging.  And finally the other, the final point of our focus today is that women are often the targets of violence during conflicts that they themselves bare the brunt of a lot of the anger that is acted out in these scenarios and then they are left, at times, alone to rebuild societies with very limited resources and without any sort of technical or capital support.  In the long-term solution, seems to be fairly obvious is that it is prevention strategy needs to be engaged in, we need to prevent these conflicts through sustainable development looking for ways to prevent hunger and poverty in environmentally sound ways.  Four sort of approaches spring to mind, we need to look at ways of expanding economic improvement for people and this especially for women, help them find income generating activities so they can be economically self-sufficient.  We need to look at ways of providing basic human needs, such as food production, water, housing sanitation all with technologies that are appropriate for women as well that address their specific needs, especially their labor issues that they are faced with.  Third point, we need to look at ways of protecting and enhancing the natural environment, the basic resource base that people depend on.  This is extremely vital to protecting livelihoods and income generations.  In finally in long-term strategy we need to look at ways in promoting pluralism and democratic participation.  This is critical for the process of reconstructing societies and also for ensuring women’s participation in the new social systems that emerge out of complex emergencies.  Often times, we take the point of view of complex emergencies as tragedies that they are because there is a lot of human suffering involved but at the same time those of us in the PVO community see opportunities to perhaps reengineer and to address long standing inequities in terms of gender relations in certain societies.  So it is something to be considered and something to be perhaps something to be addressed on a case-by-case basis.  In the short term, the challenges we are faced with though are how can we improve our targeting of relief efforts, and how can we involve women in the actual relief effort itself.  Traditionally, it has been men that come forward and resources involved and have very quickly appropriate that process and interviews that have experienced these whole issues of how those resources have been distributed in refugee camps or in more transitional situations of how those are actually channeled.  It’s not that a lot of the high amount of nutrition rates linked with distribution systems that women don’t actually control.  And so say the children’s approach is at least even in relief, transition, and development we always look for ways to build local capacity, and this includes the women that are involved.  The women are the primary stakeholders in a lot of these complex emergencies and so we look for ways to programmatically include them in this process.  So in this session, we would like to illustrate and highlight some of the challenges, women face under complex emergencies.  We won’t cover all topics; each one has an individual sort of presentation.  Uh, so we are looking at the challenges but we are also looking at ways that women are bonding either spontaneously or through programmatic efforts developed by different PVOs and finally we hope to provide some suggestions for more effective programming in complex emergencies.  And I’ll let our first presenter; she has already introduced herself, Jennifer Deck, Program Manager, for Children in Crisis Program for Save the Children, United States.  And unfortunately Jennifer has to leave early so I’m going to let her take questions about her presentation you can ask them now because she has to leave early. 

Good Afternoon, actually I just wanted to speak briefly this afternoon about following about on final comments about using women as resources.   In conflict and certainly in post conflict situations um probably most of you know that save the Children is best known as for our development programs where we do participatory community based development programs um well we also use that same approach and take it into a post conflict situation and I think that as save the children that’s where our unique expertise comes in.  I would like to share with you some examples of a conflict and post conflict situation where we have used a community based approach, I’ll use Mozambique to illustrate our methodology.  Um first of all save the children assumes that even under the hardest conditions a family will function as a survival unit and that that survival unit will function within a community unit.  Um during a conflict, the family composition may change and may look like it might be a women headed household, it might be a child headed household, but still that family unit will function as a unit for survival.  So therefore, save the children strives to support the knowledge based that already exists within that unit and uses that as a working methodology in the context of war.  We assume that the family base will take existing knowledge and use to carry on in a post conflict situation so we tend to look at that and to come in and say, “where can we add on to that or where can we support that rather than where can we change it”?  Although Thor did bring up a good point about using that as an opportunity to may be address social and inequalities that existed before the war.  Um where we can see that as an opportunity as opposed to constraints.  Umm so just to put an end to a perspective, during Mozambique civil war one million of its 7 million inhabitants were casualties and approximately five and half million people were displaced.  One may ask himself well what are we doing, what can we do in light of this situation and how long will the suffering last?  I don’t have those answered um but we do know that some answers come from the people who are living that and that’s what we try to listen to in our programming approach and design .um there is a saying in Mozambique that when two elephants fight, it’s the grass in the middle that’s trampled and this is certainly the case for the effective that war has had in local communities, women and children all over not only Mozambique.  Um so I would like to take this opportunity to talk about how do we, the places that that straw is resilient how do we help that grow and how can we nurture that to resist the devastating effects of the elephant’s force.  Uh, the save the children program began in 1988 when we began working with the ministries of health, social welfare, agriculture and education and communities affected or displaced by war.  Um save the children agreed to help them the Mozambican government with their documentation tracing and reunification program in seven of the eleven provinces to provide assistance for children who were displaced.   In addition to the documentation and reunification activities, integrated programs grew in villages that addressed the longer-term issues that including maternal and children health, agricultural productivity, education, and water and sanitation.  The program was community based relying on indigenous helping groups including traditional birth attendants, traditional healers and respected elders.  Through a unique mobilization process, the program worked to enable women and their families to make changes.  The methodology is participatory which means it is based on safety, respect, equity, non-competitive atmosphere and fun.  We’ve discovered that if it’s not fun, than no one will come for sure.  Um and that doesn’t mean that it’s all fun and games, but we do try and make it something that the communities look forward to taking part in rather than something that is forced upon them by a one side entity.  Um so to illustrate that a little vignette when save the children enters a community the first thing we try and do is build trust between community members and ourselves or/and our program managers.  We use small group discussions, we use surveys with women and doing that we can simultaneously gather information and establish a working relationship between ourselves and/or the community members.  We use adult education techniques that respect the existing knowledge base as well as the time constraints that are placed on the community members.  That is a very crucial issue and that is where the respect comes back in that people are doing many other things besides partaking in our project and that is something that has come up again and again as a very important aspect of our programming.  And additionally, we use song, dance and theater as a mechanism of message delivery that makes it a traditional methodology that one wouldn’t have to be literate in order to receive the message and comprehend it but also its fun.  And that goes back to bring it all together, bring communities together, not targeting specific groups and perhaps ostracizing them from the rest of the community.  An example of what could come out of this in a community where save the children was looking to gather help data at the household level we were training family visitors and we facilitated the community coming together and they set up criteria or they decided what the criteria should be for one to be a family visitor.  We also, there were also a very strong women’s group in that community that participated as well as a very strong youth group.  Which is quite amazing, actually it wasn’t only men that came in the beginning.  There actually were women and youth.  Umm and some of the criteria that they developed was that a person had to be respected, they didn’t have to be able to read and write, they could be a man or a women, and basically they just had to want to help their communities.  And of the 60 family visitors that were selected in one community, 60% of them were women and 40% were men.  In a neighboring community, 90% of them were women and 10% of them were men.  And just a note on that, more than half of the original family visitors from the original training are still active.  The ones that are no longer working either died or are ill, but no one has dropped out from lack of interest which is quite amazing, and that again goes back to program design and the inception of the program to get people to come together around an issue that they care about that is a priority for them but that’s also interesting and worthwhile.  Umm in this post conflict situation we can say that it was the fight for normalcy that women, that brought women together, that they wanted as semblance of normalcy in their lives and that led to the change that led to our help program that I won’t go into detail here, but the statistics are showing that child normal ability decreased STDs, HIV’s transition decreased in the communities, and so that is very important that most of these and certainly the community where the family visitors were 90% women it really showed the courage that these women took to rebuild their societies and their communities in a post conflict situation.  Umm an example from a shi shi district trading in Mozambique ten women were selected to be trained and one week before the training a nearby village was destabilized and people were displaced, but nonetheless these ten women showed up for their training and when they were asked why they came and why it was important a women responded we can’t stop living because of the war, we must continue to grow.  And I think this pretty much sums up the tremendous courage these women have to risk to bring about change in a post conflict situation.  I will stop there and will be glad to take any questions.

 

Q.      I know that a tremendous barrier to food security as well as to women’s health in Mozambique right now is the issue of land mines, in agricultural areas and I was wondering if save the children has done anything to address the issue of land mines and to educate women about it as well?

 

(Whispering, unable to make it out)

 

Actually that’s a really good point, and if I had more time we would get into that quite at length because I think it is a very good issue that you bring up and actually both Thor and Steve are very interested in this topic and I think you’ll see more papers being written on this link.  It is very important save the children is very involved in education and awareness programs.  Right now we have programs in Afghanistan and a small education program in Angola, but it is very important we look at demeaning as one way, one solution, but also realize that that’s a solution that’s going to take a long time to reach.  Education and awareness on the other hand is something, that again, at a community based level, bringing in local trainers, local victims or survivors is, has shown to be very effective and making that link is very important and I thank you for bringing it up.

 

Q.      I would invite you to look at Save the Children’s booth in the exhibit hall we have a land’s mine awareness booth there and has a lot of literature there as well if you are interested, feel free to visit that but it’s an issue that affects food security quite directly.  We’re just finishing up a very large project in Angola, the agriculture area clearance project that was specifically targeted at cleaning up agriculture land that had been taken out of production due to land mines left over from the 20 year conflict there in Angola. 

 

Q.      I thank you for your speech and I know of a little bit of the work that save the children is doing in Mozambique, now that we have an example of how the ______ can be especially for women and children what is save the children doing to education the government every level of the economy, the effect especially the effect of conflict on food security. 

 

I don’t know if I’m quality to answer that one, but Save the children does do advocacy work and we strive for all of our programs to reach scale to have a national impact where we are and exactly to do what you’re saying to influence government programming and ministries whether or not we can get them to not engage in warfare is a whole other issue, but we certainly do try to teach them and work with them capacity building from immediate post conflict stage to do community development activities in a post conflict situation and I don’t know if anyone else would like to answer that….

 

Yes, my only comment would be that there is obviously a trend within the entire PVO community and even the donor community as well to address issues of civil society of acceptance of pluralism and you know, ethnic tolerance and improve communication you know at the local level all the way up through society and uh save the children as well as many other PVO organizations are beginning to address this program radically.  Looking, I know that ex soviet union, save the children has been very active in helping the development of national NGOs addressing issues within their own societies also in the ex Yugoslavia as well.  Save the Children has been quite involved in numerous activities in that dealing with issues that divide communities, what they may be, in this case the Balkans we are looking at ethnic issues.  But whatever the circumstances are around the world, we would definitely, even within our food security program, and I’m going to speak on Guatemala, later on which has an ethnic base to its conflict base as well as an economic base and obviously its not enough to address just technical issues within food security we need to address these broader social issues that are also very serious obstacles. 

 

I’m Jack Schmidt from the Urban Agriculture Network and I Have been particular impressed in Mozambique with the programs for cooperatives h farming cooperatives, food cooperatives, and particular the ones that got attention wearing prop toe?  It is my understanding that the cooperatives that were set up during the war and then expanded after the war were mostly taken over my women, although it wasn’t designed that way – that the women became the principal movers and shakers within the cooperatives and that they went on from producing food to having crashes for daycare and other programs.  Could you comment on that?

 

I don’t know the particulars in Mozambique jack but I know that a lot of our own work issues in other courtiers that uh we get a good return on our investment, on our organizational investment by working with women’s associations and uh we’re going to highlight that in our Guatemala presentation that h we, especially when we’re dealing with food commodities and relief situations that accountability is much better, leakage is a lot less, and uh in post-conflict situations where you are trying to organize and rebuild and it would be interesting to look at the variables involved as to why are women so willing to organize and participate in these reconstructing efforts.  I think one of them Jennifer pointed out is the desire to return to normalcy, to have a pattern of life that fits ideal concept, and ideal construct, that this you know, you are able to meet their basic needs, they are able to provide for their family, you know, they’re able to provide put clothes, and send their kids to school.  We find in terms of schooling that women are the first ones there to help reconstruct and rehabilitate the schools, and to form the school committees and to put pressures on the teachers that show up and actually fulfill their obligations in reconstruction, sort of environments. 

 

(Whispering), I’m not sure if these cooperatives that you are talking about are the ___________.  That is outside of Monopulto.  Those are actually originated by women and during the socialist administration; they started those committee plats just outside Monopultu.  I don’t know whether they went from one formation with women and then another into a male dominate one and then back through conflict, but I know they are initiated as a women’s effort. 

 

Was it pre-conflict?  Yeh, it was pre-conflict.  You know they changed after the conflict and took over different areas of land.  But it was a pre-conflict initiative from _________ government. 

 

I’d like to find out how “feed the children programs” enhanced food security during that conflict time before in Mozambique. 

 

Perhaps Lauren can take this (laughing) I’ve just been with Saved one year, but as far as I now as a relief operation during the conflict, mostly commodities supplies to affected villages up in the north part of the country, but I don’t know if they have had any other specific activities during that time Lauren,

 

Mostly it was _______ for returnees and helping them to get back to this thing of normalcy so to build their long-term food security and then targeting, which we have built into with them in, LoCotabella and other, can’t remember the other name, in the Nopulla province to focus on longer term food security in areas that we felt was one of the most food insecurity even after the reintegration had taken place in most of the other places __________.

 

Not quite, I didn’t come prepared to do this.  If I can just restate what Lauren said, during the serious conflict a lot of it was just direct relief of commodities and supplies and tools, and seeds being moved.  First of all, first of all, keep people from starving was usually the first step.  The second step is to assist in reconstruction through recapitalizing farms with tools, technologies and seeds to get their farming systems going up.  And also investing in human capital was the other thing that Jennifer addressed.  You know, that working with women and uh assisting them to return to some sense of a normal life as quickly as possible.  And currently in Mozambique where we’re working up in the north will a full fledge food security project that includes a lot of road rehabilitation road construction into isolated areas uh have a very strong sustainable agricultural component that is addressing various issues in farming system areas that is very arid, area Kosovos is the main crop and has a high arsenic, cyanide, excuse me cyanide content in it so we are introducing some varieties new varieties they are working with farmers unacceptability and cultivation techniques and things like that.  There are some things on storage, improving food storage facilities to reduce post harvest losses then we have a whole health component as well that addresses direct more nutritional issues and issues of food preparation, diversity, certain hygiene issues, maternal child health, these sorts of issues and that is very tightly integrated with the child survival project that has a whole list of health interventions as well.  But that’s again, post conflict now, I’m talking about this last one is post conflict; addressing the reconstruction of food security, long term food security.  But during the conflict it was relieved and uh and huh resupply.

 

I would like to take this opportunity my name is Omua Oyopohi, I’m from the Administer of Agriculture, Abou Hani ________, I would like to say this opportunity to say thank you for the work that you are doing but I think um on the whole from my experience, I have found, that in our continent, Africa, people don’t understand what is food security.  Because it is from their understanding of the word food security that you can get cooperation where I think people, I am not saying uneducated people, but the people at the grass root level, and I know that these people are the programs are supposed to help.  So one, I would suggest that you have one day like we have in the day to say food security awareness day worldwide.  It is so important that you put out concept issues about food security the way you want the grass roots to understand it, not the big English grammar kind of thing, in pictures, in poems, in poetry amongst schools, amongst youths, among women, secondly then you point out the important of the relationsh8ip between food security and conflicts.  What do you get when you go into war?  Governments don’t understand that you put your country at a big risk when you go into war food security wide apart from the pride, you know, I think the tie up is important, to point it out every time each time you go into any country you can do it as an _____.  Very few of us can and you should be able to bring, to the floor, the relationship between conflicts of any kind and food security and you should be able to have a network of prevention of conflict in any form, whether it is wartime, drought, do it, just do a little bit so people know that there is a relationship.  Thank you.

 

Two quick comments then we’ll go to the next presentation.  I just wanted to comment that a paper has just been published on the relationship between food security and war by if pry.  It’s actually written by Brown University, which is excellent and gives you the data connecting it and makes exactly the same point.    I’m sorry.

 

Again, my question is focusing on the food security issue.  When you talk about the food security does that involve livestock as well and if so, I’ve been to Mozambique and I don’t know what the levels are in terms of you know owning animals rather do you see some of the head of the households as women do they have access, you know, small livestock and if so, do they have control over it or I’m mean, you know do they have access to the use of the products in terms of medical for children and stuff like that?

 

No, definitely a problem.  One of the consequence of many consequences of conflict emergencies are usually that livestock is severely depleted.  War infractions quickly target cattle because it is a mobile resource that they can move with them very easily and uh we see in Angola, particularly those households have been completed, herds have been completely disseminated and households have been their source of savings for a lot of smallholder producers is livestock. And uh in Angola we have a restocking proposal in right now to look at reestablishing traction animals and milk animals and uh the idea in Angola would be that the women would control the milking animals and then benefit from the proceeds for household consumption and also for sales. But it is definitely a very good point.

 

Also other project that we are involved in other parts of the world we look at small livestock production as well something in the immediate household that can be done for consumption purposes and also for sales purposes often a very important revenue generation mechanism as well is livestock.

 

Yeh, the only reason I am asking is because we have got a situation in southern Sudan, that is where I come from, you find that you know women and children have many focuses on this small life struck and that is the central part of their lives and we have two different types of, you know, people fedentiary and pasturalist groups.  Now the pasturalist group is very really severely devastated with what had happened to the animals that it is up to small livestock that includes goats and chickens and that is the only source of animal protein that they would be able to get um and therefore, you know, women head of households for example which constitute the majority right now in Southern Sudan serve as the access to that kind of support and you know I wanted to kind of get an understanding to what could be done because it is one of the problems that you know INGENOS do not see as an immediate problem, but you know a group, like the pasturalist group sees it as the core of the livelihood and benefit and what could be done to such family.  Which of course, you don’t have the answer.

 

Yeh, I just mention in closing before we go to the next presenter here, you have a comment.  I think in Mozambique, essentially the people aren’t as dependent on livestock for their whole sustenance.  Generally, they are ________ agriculturalist and in certain areas, they use livestock for animal traction and in the like, but I think in Sudan, I don’t know much about Sudan, but the people really do depend essentially are pasturalist so they depend very much on livestock and I remember,

 

(Comment, unable to hear clearly)

 

Yeh, but you have groups, that are very dependent on it, so it becomes an issue and in Angola there is the same thing and I remember when I did an evaluation of the relief program there for AFTA, there was a bigger concern for livestock issues in areas where people were largely pasturalist and really had been very dependent upon livestock before, but I think it tends to be an underrated type, maybe because it is more complex and it takes time to restock and this kind of thing, but those two countries have large populations that aren’t pasturalists so that might be why they may not be the best example for Sudan.

 

Uh, just a closing comment, now we’ll let Patricia present her presentation, but we do uh, have a very large food security project in Ethiopia that focuses on precisely what you are talking about pasturalists groups.  First of all, helping them improve the herd management, helping them, protect their rangelands from encroachment and deterioration of the pasture itself, helping them actually learn appropriate veterinarian techniques you know to improve the health of their animals, also a look in terms of water, watering hole rehabilitation and spacing a whole issue there in terms of water supply of these herds as well.  So, yeh, we realize in certain context that cattle are a very important resource and very important part of the livelihood of particular groups of people in different parts of the world and look for ways of teaming with NGOs, other PVOs that are specialists in this and of course, HEPPER projects spring to mind you know that the premier organization in terms of dealing with livestock development, especially targeted towards women as well.

 

(Unable to grasp conversations in background)

 

Ok.  Well I was asked to reintroduce myself when I came up to speak so my name is Patricia Bonard and I am an independent consultant.  I am an Agriculture Economist.  I have worked a lot in development work but have had the opportunity to both work in relief and transition types of economies largely because of the language. I’m Portuguese.  A lot of these countries who speak Portuguese are in transition or have just recently come out of complex emergencies so, my experience has broadened, My presentation draws principally from my experience with Angola but I also have experience with Liberia pre conflict and Mozambique, both pre conflict and post conflict.  I tend to emphasize much more with the agriculture part of relief programs, seeds and tools and that kind of thing and issues that women face as agriculturists because that my area.  As the number in duration of complex emergencies expand so does the cost of providing assistance.  Unlike acute emergencies such as natural disasters, um complex emergencies associates with a great deal of uncertainty especially regarding how long the conflict will last whether the assistance will actually promote and prolongs the conflict emergency and how much the assistance program will ultimately cost.  A good example of this is AFTAS program in Angola and started out as a relief program for drought in 1989 and then with the onset of conflict, it continued, and it continued until 1996 when a transitional phase was supposed to occur.  As we know, the transition hasn’t really quite happened.

Between 1989 and 1998, AFTAs Program alone was one hundred twenty four million and from 1996 until now, its forty-six million which is a period of time which was the period of time it was supposed to be in transition so, and right now, there continues to be sporadic fighting, attacks on villages, continual waves of IUPs requiring assistance so AFTA Program, again in 1998, will provide more assistance for IUPs but they’ll do so through the UN program.  So you can see these conflict emergencies just keep on going and going and in Angola it has lasted over a decade, which is a substantial amount of people with living experience.  So with the characteristics of these complex emergencies, it is not surprising that donors are starting to take a hard look at the cost and the benefits of assistance, experimenting with new types of programs, and questioning whether the assistance actually helps in the long run.  But let’s assume that assistance does help.  Um, still the humanitarian assistance dollars are very, very limited and if scarce resources aren’t used well, then we have opportunities that are lost and this is one of the most, probably for me one of the most profound thing when I moved into relief, was to see that this is what we are talking about, is lost opportunities to help people.   And while, I’m an economist, but I’m not a real strict one, while applying efficiency criteria to complex emergencies is impossible and undesirable.  Adjusting programs and procedures to use resources the best way possible are both possible and both desirable so through my experience, I saw that the first step was to really know your population. Not just the numbers of  (COMPLETE SILENT – END OF TAPE)…………….