Member profile
Dr. Ashraf Alhawamdeh
Organization:
Food and Agriculture organization FAO
Country:
Yemen
Field(s) of expertise:
I am working on:
FAO as agricultural officer
Dr. Ashraf Alhawamdeh
United Nations Decade of Family Farming Regional Actions Plan for NENA Region
FAO, Yemen
Date: August 31, 2020
Undoubtedly, Yemen and being one of the NENA countries with the armed conflict, severe economic decline, food insecurity and collapse of essential services like health water and sanitation, losing jobs continue to take an enormous toll on the population, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and driving the country to the brink of famine creating the largest food security emergency in the world. In fact, the country is experiencing a 'humanitarian catastrophe' that remains the worst in the world.
Impact of COVID-19 outbreak in NENA region
When resourceful countries in best possible socio-economic situation have struggled to cope with the scale and magnitude of COVID-19 pandemic, Yemen is indeed be in a catastrophic situation. With the public services already at the brink of collapse. Social isolation for more than 14 million people who are facing acute risks of malnutrition as it is the single largest contributor to disease in the world, and famine that renders an already dire situation to significant crisis proportions. Yemen has been facing lockdown for more than five years now through sea and air and with recent introduction of internal lockdown between north and south, the vulnerability to food insecurity and malnutrition will only continue to grow.
This pandemic is not just a health crisis; rather, tackling COVID-19 is also a humanitarian and development crisis that is threatening to leave deep social, economic and political scars for years to come, particularly in countries already weighed down by fragility, poverty and continuous conflict like Yemen.
Beyond its impact on human health, COVID-19 is disrupting the supply chain could also affect agricultural production; in particular, small-scale family farmers (SSFF) and limit the availability of seasonal agricultural workers, and frozen labour markets. This recession driven by COVID-19 has declined a major source of incomes for poor households, hard currency, and damaged harvests and exacerbate already severe food insecurity, for most countries in the region of Near East & North Africa, particularly in areas affected by conflict; Yemen is dramatically affected.
The main areas of interventions that could efficiently build SSFF resilience and ensure sustainable livelihood, and in order to keep the farmers in the lead, to eliminate restricted access to necessities, and deprived vulnerable Yemenis of the means to support themselves, efforts must be taken to allow them to "participate" consciously and voluntarily, for their own benefit and interests.
“Enhanced Rural Resilience in Yemen (ERRY)” Programme aims at enhancing the resilience and self-reliance of crisis-affected rural communities through support livelihoods stabilization, food security, local governance, social cohesion and improved access to sustainable energy.
The overall goal is to make a significant contribution towards improving food security and nutrition and strengthening the resilience of vulnerable rural and peri-urban households while restoring the agriculture including the SSFF sector of the country throughout the following:
- Support implementing partners and community facilitators, beneficiaries in the six southern-targeted districts with hygienic kits contain of (solid soap, sanitizer, gloves and masks)
- Facilitate IPs to post stickers of Dos and Don’ts leaflets of COVID-19 in public places.
- Support IPs to install handwashing stations in health center.
- Support community health volunteers to conduct awareness sessions as guided by the health authorities, and to facilitate the preventive guidance and tools.
-Avoid mass gatherings for project awareness and sensitization.
- Where possible, Support Community Radio (to Communicate Key Messaging on COVID-19 Preparedness Measures through locally acceptable dialogues.
In addition, the implementation of this agricultural development strategy should be compatible and accepted by family farmers so, making them ready to bear the related costs, in accordance with their abilities and their means. Furthermore, agricultural development should be compatible with farmer's needs and aspirations and consistent with the extent of the obstacles they face. However, (SSFF) can also be part of the solution considering that they are the source of producing food and the source of life. The drastic implications that COVID-19 is having for the SSFF sector are becoming obvious. Development organizations have a substantial role to play in: creating targeted economic relief packages, protecting workers from COVID-19.
In brief, we can see that questions about the sustainability of investments in rural and agricultural development over the past decade are therefore particularly pertinent today. In the absence of appropriate support mechanisms, gains from these investments may be completely eroded in a short time. This is especially true in contexts like Yemen, where poor rural dwellers’ livelihoods are especially sensitive to a range of internal and external economic factors when and where battle for survival as COVID-19 takes hold!!..
Sustainable transition towards more sustainable agri-food systems
Towards an inclusive and equitable growth
Sustainability is the most significant indicator for success of any project in enhancing the targeting of vulnerable community, and raising incomes and improving or creating sources of income in the ongoing conditions within that project area. FAO_ERRY project targets poor smallholders, particularly women, who are the core producers of agricultural/ livestock production to alleviate poverty, promote development in the countryside, and enhance the sustainability of natural resources.
Rural women face greater constraints than men in accessing land, technology, markets, infrastructure and services. Women are just as good as men in farming: evidence shows that when rural women have the same access as men to productive resources, services and economic opportunities there is a significant increase in agricultural output and immediate and long term social and economic gains, all contributing to the reduction in the number of poor and hungry people.
A real example from the field, one of ERRY’s hero beneficiary called Bushra from Tuban/ Lahj. Bushra is one of thousands of traditional dairy products producers that the project could made a qualitive shift in her and her family life. From an ordinary housewife to having a center that daily produce 300_400 of different dairy products like haqeen, youghurt, ghee, different kinds of cheese.[1]
Enabling environment for the implementation of UNDFFAny interventions developed during the UNDFF must always consider the diversity of family farmers. They should be context-specific, adapted to regional, national, local socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions. To guarantee the success of the UNDFF, all actions should place family farmers at the center and be implemented through bottom-up, participatory and inclusive processes.
The roles of Governments, development agencies, farmers’ organizations, civil society and private sector in implementing the UNDFF in the region may show at the following:
Partnerships
How can innovative partnerships be built and established? And how/what existing initiatives would you propose to replicate or scale up?
Multi-stakeholder platforms form an essential part of the ‘infrastructure’ that is necessary to scale up public-private collaboration for post-2015 development. Creating effective, sustainable platforms, however, is a significant challenge. It requires a whole range of skills, support and processes to engage stakeholders from all sectors and ensure they receive sufficient value to remain engaged; to host innovation labs and other creative dialogues to spark collaboration ideas; to provide technical support to facilitate nascent partnerships; and measure the value partnerships are delivering. And, of course, all the time ensuring the platform has sufficient resources and a sustainable business plan.
Engaging Family Farming in the setting of development priorities by providing direct support to partnerships, the platforms can help to ensure they are set up to be as robust and effective as possible as well as assisting in measuring their value to all their lives sides. As such, it directly acknowledges and tackles the tension between what is theoretically desirable and what is practically feasible under normal, resource-constrained circumstances. While the report is a significant contribution to the art and science of developing effective platforms, the field is still emerging. The Partnering Initiative, through its Family Farming Partners for Development program, is supporting the creation of platforms in a range of countries and will continue to draw out learning from these experiences and develop tools and guides for effective practice such platforms can in turn significantly influence several of the other action areas. Most importantly, through working together in the partnerships the platforms catalyze, business, government and other development actors will naturally build understanding and trust.
At the end and over all, real commitments and stronger partnerships will lead to a shift from traditional sectoral policies to comprehensive, context-specific strategies and programs that adequately support family farmers and their multi-dimensional nature.
[1] Her story is attached