Building up new lives and livelihoods out of destruction
In conflict areas, FAO supports people in their daily lives, helping to ensure that they can continue to earn an income, provide food for their families, access medical care and send their children to school.
faf Jafar has worked in agriculture, particularly in growing figs, since she was young. Since the crisis, the cost of figs is so low that it doesn’t cover the cost of production. ©FAO/Jafaar Merie
Since 2011, the Syrian conflict has hard hit the families in the country. Family members have been lost, homes and belongings left behind. Food and agriculture practices passed on for generations have been abandoned. Even the ties to home towns, villages, traditions and history have been broken.
Women often bear the brunt of this disruption. For Adla Hasan, for example, when her olive trees stopped producing fruits, it wasn’t just the loss of her livelihood, it was losing a part of her family history.
“I make olive products because these are the products which were made for years by my parents and my grandparents. I love my job,” she discloses.
Adla is from Safita, Tartous in the northwestern part of Syria, just north of Lebanon. This is olive-growing country, the Mediterranean climate perfectly suited for the robust trees and their precious fruit.
Before the crisis, Adla’s family could live off of their olive production. Now all the money that she makes goes to providing for their daily needs. She has none left to spend on her farm – on fertilizer, irrigation, pruning – so the trees aren’t producing anymore. She has nothing to harvest.
Adla turned to working in a plastic factory in Tartous, a city 25 kilometers away from her home, as there was no other way to support herself, her brother and his six children.