WORLD HUNGER:Ahead of Women's Day, Oxfam ambassador HELENA CHRISTENSENon the plight of women struggling to feed their families
I HAVE JUST RETURNED from my third trip as an ambassador with Oxfam, the international humanitarian organisation. On my previous trips with Oxfam, we visited Peru and Nepal, where I met and photographed women struggling to cope with the impact of global warming.
This time, I wanted to go to Africa to try to understand how it can be that climate change determines whether a mother can send her child to school and put food on the table.
Women produce up to 80 per cent of food in some underdeveloped countries, yet they are less likely to own their own land, they often toil the least productive areas and receive little financial or agricultural support.
The world needs to invest more in women farmers and pastoralists. It is clear to me now that if women are given a voice and equal standing in their communities, they could hold the keys to solving global hunger.
On this trip we went to east Africa where I met Elisabeth and Josephine. Elisabeth lives in rural Turkana, in the north of Kenya – one of the many regions in the Horn of Africa that have been affected by the severe drought that has put the lives and livelihoods of more than 13 million people at risk.
Josephine lives nearly 600km south of Elisabeth, in Mukuru, a vast and impoverished slum in Kenya’s vibrant capital city, Nairobi. Mukuru is one of the largest slums in Kenya, yet it sits not far from Nairobi’s luxury apartments and shiny cars.
The lives of these two women have changed dramatically in recent years as they have faced a double shock: unpredictable weather and spikes in food prices. Whether or not they can provide their children with two solid meals a day is now out of their control.
As is often the case in poor areas, many of the women I met are responsible for feeding their families and, when times are hard, sometimes they go without food to allow their husbands and children to eat. Elisabeth used to be a pastoralist, a nomadic farmer. She depended on her camels and goats to feed her 11 children and grandchildren, but all the animals died in the drought. Now her family depends on what she makes from selling charcoal, and emergency aid. She is tiny and looks weak, but she walks 12km every day to collect the charcoal and sell it in a village nearby.
She cannot afford to pay for the bus ride. The price of fuel has skyrocketed. Whenever the price of the food goes up, she is forced to pull her younger children and grandchildren out of school – and the price of maize and beans has doubled over the past year. She can now only pay for her oldest son to go to school.
“I’m struggling to make sense of what is happening,” Elisabeth told me.
“Just 10 years ago, everything was green. We had plenty of milk and meat, thanks to our goats and camels. Now it’s all dry. The lack of water is making our lives harder and harder. I’m worried about my little ones.”
In the early mornings, while Elisabeth is still sleeping in a tiny hut with her six grandchildren, Josephine wakes up at 5am in Mukuru slum, on the other side of Kenya, to collect charcoal and cabbages. This slum in southeast Nairobi is home to several hundred thousand people – it is hard to tell exactly how many people live there. Large families are crammed into tiny corrugated iron shacks. Hundreds of kids are running around barefoot.
Like Elisabeth, Josephine was also a pastoralist. She had to move to the city and abandon her life in her home village so that she could provide at least one hot meal a day for the 13 children she takes care of, some of whom are orphans.
Oxfam is helping Josephine and other women like her to start their own businesses. Some of these women are also HIV-positive and in real need of support. Poverty puts basic healthcare and education beyond their reach.
There is enough food in the world for everyone, but one in seven people go to bed hungry every day and the vast majority are women and girls. Next Thursday is International Women’s Day, a time when we might ask ourselves how this can still be happening in 2012. What can we do to make some radical changes that will resonate in a positive way?
Thankfully, the future is not set in stone. An alternative world is possible, if we transform the way we produce and share food. I believe that there are enough people who really care about the world and the people who live in it, and who are prepared to make fundamental changes to fix the broken food system and ensure everyone has enough to eat.
Grow is Oxfam’s campaign for better ways to grow, share, and live together. It’s a campaign for the billions of us who eat food and the more than a billion men and women who grow it, to share solutions for a better future in which everyone always has enough to eat.
To find out more about Grow, see oxfamireland.org