It is widely understood that the food insecurity crisis in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing and most neglected crises. It lacks sufficient global focus, resources and urgency. As in so many crises, women and girls are disproportionately affected and shoulder t...he consequences of protracted neglect, with unconscionable impacts on their safety, life chances and agency.
Gaining a holistic view of the gendered drivers, risks and impacts of food insecurity in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa is difficult. This is due to a lack of data and prioritization, and the large geographical and socioeconomic terrain covered by both regions. However, what we do know about this crisis is more than enough to urgently address the needs of women and girls.
An OCHA discussion paper on this topic (which will be published imminently, and from which this policy brief is drawn) found that there is:
A strong risk of profound regression in gender equality gains made to date in the countries of concern, including on education, sexual and reproductive health, and the economic independence of women and girls (with knock-on effects on broader humanitarian and development outcomes).
An increasing challenge to reverse what must be recognized as a protracted and growing gender-based violence (GBV) emergency in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
The food insecurity crisis in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa is protracted, multidimensional and highly gendered, with spiralling impacts on gender equality and food security outcomes. It is driven by interwoven and overlapping factors, including climate change, political instability, conflict, socioeconomic conditions, migration and displacement and, more recently, COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Interlinked with these factors are gendered structural drivers of food insecurity, including deeply entrenched gender inequalities and harmful social norms. Gendered risks and impacts of food insecurity include alarming limitations on access to education, sexual and reproductive health rights, women’s agency and participation, and dramatic increases in different existing forms of GBV and the emergence of new ones. Recognition of such gendered dimensions of food insecurity and of the need for a multisectoral approach in the response is key to addressing the crisis, along-side sustained commitment and adequate allocation of resources. This policy brief draws out key findings from the OCHA discussion paper on this topic, which includes a desk review of studies, assessments and reports, and interviews with local women’s organizations on the front lines of the food insecurity crisis in communities across both regions.
Below are the most pressing gendered drivers, risks and impacts of food insecurity (not in order of priority), as well as key gaps in the current humanitarian response to food insecurity, and recommendations to take forward.
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“The children are psychologically crushed and tired.
When we do activities like singing with them, they
don’t respond at all. They don’t laugh like they
would normally. They draw images of children
being butchered in the war, or tanks, or the siege
and the lack of food.”
Teacher in the... besieged town of Madaya to Save the Children
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Qualitative study from Zambia on barriers to and facilitators of life-long learning
This report from Human Rights Watch found that South Africa has failed to guarantee the right to education for many of the country’s children and young adults due to widespread discrimination against children with disabilities in enrollment decisions. Human Rights Watch research in five out of Sou...th Africa’s nine provinces showed that children with disabilities face discriminatory physical and attitudinal barriers, often beginning early in children’s lives when government officials classify them according to their disabilities. Human Rights Watch August 2015
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has launched a new Compendium of forgotten foods in Africa which is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive collection of 100 African forgotten food crops.
Also referred to as neglected, underutilized or orphan crops, these species offer valua...ble benefits, including nutrition and diet diversification, while supporting resilient, climate-smart agriculture but they are at risk of being lost as foods such as maize, rice and wheat dominate African diets.
The compendium list includes details on each crop's botanical classification, agroecological suitability, agronomic requirements, traditional and medicinal uses, value-added prospects and nutritional content. Among the entries are: African locust beans, African nightshade, baobab, Bambara nut, bush mango, cassava, fonio, marula, moringa, teff and tigernut.
Produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s Regional Office for Africa with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the Compendium is a direct response to the UN Food Systems Summit and the Call for Collective Action in the Global Manifesto on Forgotten Foods.
Embracing both agricultural heritage and innovation can transform agrifood systems across Africa. By cataloguing these forgotten or underutilized crops, traditional knowledge is being honoured in the push to unlock the potential for better nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and resilience against the climate crisis.
In a joint foreword to the publication, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa Abebe Haile-Gabriel and FARA Executive Director Aggrey Agumya urged the mainstreaming of forgotten foods into African agrifood systems.
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Best practices for communicating with the public during an outbreak
Women and girls are paying the price of the war in Yemen – Humanitarian actors must increase the priority given to women and girls’ needs, with specific attention to GBV prevention and response, and reproductive health services
God. XXIX, BR. 2/2016. str. 323-334
In this paper an attempt has been made to contextualize the ecological dimension of contemporary Catholic
social teaching. With this aim in mind, the authors discuss the merits of several theories and approaches
(political economy approaches, ecological moderni...zation theory, environmental justice theory, and social
constructionism) coming from environmental sociology and other disciplinary traditions in the social sciences.
After an analysis of relevant historical documents of Catholic social teaching with respect to the
environmental issues covered by them, the authors discuss the main lines of argument present in the recent
(2015) encyclical Laudato Si’ (Pope Francis) and interpret them in the aforementioned theoretical framework.
In conclusion, the usefulness of Catholic social teaching for the public dialogue between science and
other relevant stakeholders, as well as its main strengths and weaknesses have been discussed
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Stats SA has released an in-depth report on persons with disabilities. The report, written using Census 2011 data, is the first in a series of in-depth analyses of various Census 2011 variables, such as ageing and education.
The report provides statistical evidence relating to the prevalence of dis...ability and characteristics of persons with disabilities at both individual and household levels. Two methods were used to profile disability prevalence and patterns based on the six functional domains, namely seeing, hearing, communication, remembering/concentrating, walking and self-care. These two methods were:
- the level/degree of difficulty in a specific functional domain and;
- the disability index.
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UNAIDS 2017 / Reference
Generating evidence for policy and action on HIV and social protection
Available in: English, French, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Thai, Korean, Tajik, Vietnamese, Uzbek
http://www.who.int/disabilities/cbr/guidelines/en/
Globalization and Health 2012, 8:15
This document has been developed to support countries develop and strengthen individualized peer support services in mental health and related areas. It addresses the provision of individualized peer support in the context of health services and the wider community.