WFP to increase communities’ resilience in FATA through seasonal livelihood program

By Tayyeb Afridi 

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in collaboration with other partners is implementing the government of Japan USD 0.5 million funded project to support seasonal livelihood program in erstwhile FATA to eradicate poverty, end malnutrition, and improve quality of lives of the repatriated populations.

The project was officially announced by the Secretary for Livelihood and Production Department, Abdul Latif, and the Ambassador of Japan in Pakistan,  Mr Takashi Kurai, during a press event in Islamabad last week.

In order to develop a sustainable model that can later be handed over to government of Pakistan, WFP will work out a strategy to enable local people to have relevant expertise, knowledge and skills to grow their own food and take care of their family needs during challenging environment, WFP country director Mr. Finbarr Curran tells Tribal New Network during an interview about the project.

While explaining the concept of seasonal livelihood program Mr. Curran says livelihood means enabling local people by giving them expertise, knowledge, quality seeds or whatever it takes so that they can establish their farms, grow their own food and have access to the market. So livelihood support is to make sure people have expertise to grow food not only for themselves but also for communities around them.

One of the components of this project is to gather Information and create centralized data hub that will help in mitigating risks and understanding the socio-economic status of the communities to produce “risk-informed planning tool to identify interventions suited to a variety of contexts and time frames”.

WFP will work with larger communities to identify needs of the communities and develop a strategy on delivering livelihood skills, humanitarian and development interventions so that people in the tribal districts can establish and support their lives by growing food in hostile environment he says while elaborating on the role of WFP in the project.

That is why WFP engages for longer term in areas such as erstwhile FATA that has witnessed conflict and now vulnerable to disasters, Mr Curran says after developing resilience of farmers and growers, the chances of eradicating poverty, and ending malnutrition will increase manifold.

Apart from WFP, Food and Agriculture organization (FAO) is also active in Pakistan and implementing projects in erstwhile FATA related to food security and improving resilience of local people.

To differentiate between the roles of the two UN agencies, Mr. Curran says that FAO looks at agricultural policies, agriculture farms, quality of seeds, whereas WFP looks at feeding people and identifying and providing nutritious food. “In fact, they work together very well on projects, for example, WFP work with FAO to help farmers grow the type of food that they believe is nutritious and healthy”, he remarks.

According to him, some people look at UN as a combination of lots of organisations that intervene in each other areas but that is not the case.

At UN, these agencies are trying to create projects that leverage each other expertise and ultimately handover projects to government because they believe once you establish a livelihood program you are in position to withdraw for government, he concludes.

https://www.tnn.com.pk/wfp-to-increase-communities-resilience-in-fata-through-seasonal-livelihood-program/

Australia lunches 6 Million AUD project to provide reproductive health support to Afghan Refugees Women in Pakistan's Border Region

Tayyeb Afridi 

PESHAWAR: Australian Ambassador for Women and Girls Dr Sharman Stone says there can’t be any honour in killing anybody in the name of honor particularly women and girls.                  

Source: There can't be any honor in killing women and girls in the name of honor

“Any murdering of individual whether it’s your daughter, your neighbour, someone you know and someone you don’t know, we don’t call it honour. There is no honour in killing anybody. We call it murder!” Dr Stone said in an exclusive interview with TNN.

Dr Stone, a former member of Australian parliament, who was on a three-day visit to Islamabad, launched a $6 million Australian Dollars’ project ‘Saving Lives of Women and Girls in Cross Border Area in Pakistan’ and also the gender-based strategy for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in Pakistan.

Dr Stone is Australia’s third ambassador for women and girls. Her job is to go through Indo-Asia-pacific region which maybe called Australia’s neighbourhood, where she work with number of countries like Pakistan to pursue  shared goals such as greater equity and economic opportunities for women and girls.

“So here in Pakistan we have lot of grant moneys for example for schools and these are girls’ schools. I visited two schools – all girls – one we built with lot of classrooms and equipment and so on to try make sure the girls have the same opportunities to go to school and to excel as boys. I know we share this goal with Pakistani’s government itself whose constitution talks about equity for all,” she said.

To a question regarding culture difference,Dr Stone said that indeed we have very different countries in terms of culture, but we have very similar colonial background.“So we do understand each other. We both love cricket. We both have very dry countries and needing water. We feel partnering with Pakistan to help make sure women have greater equity, economic opportunity, reducing gender-based violence. These are the same goals we have it for ourselves in Australia. Perhaps we can all make this world a better place,” she said.

To a question about women’s reproductive health, she said if a woman and husband cannot manage how many children they have, the spaces between their children, they can end up with women being too many babies and the resources simply run out.

“There may not be enough food or enough piece of security to have very large families. We know that access to family planning in 21st century is not a difficult thing. We have lot of products and services that can help man and woman have access to family planning. It safeguards the health of mother and the children and off-course now Pakistan has got a huge population of over 200 million,” she said.

She mentioned that Australia was a huge country but it is mostly desert, so it watches out population very carefully. About the healthcare project for Afghan women in Pakistan’s border region, she said Australia is working in partnership with Pakistani government and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to reach out afghan women living in FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“The idea is for work in these border regions where a lot of families have had conflict, disruption of their lives and have had to be displaced from their homes and they’re not living in safe and suitable accommodations, so this 6 million (AUD) is to help with family planning, health support, and also to make sure if that woman is looking for family planning she doesn’t have to go too far, she doesn’t have to spend a lot of money, we want to help those families on the ground where they face real trauma,” she said.

While responding to a question about intervention strategy, Dr Stone said the UNFPA is very experienced in its work. “What we always make sure we do is to work with local people, local midwives, local health service professionals, because they are on the ground and trusted by the local families. So off-course we have to work closely with local people,” she said.

To a question about challenges for women to enter politics, she said that in democracies such as Pakistan or Australia, it is not easy to be elected, whether a man or woman, older or young. But for women it is especially challenging.She said that In Pakistan, the women ratio in the parliament is 3 or so percent because people have elected 8 women on contest seats . In Asia-Pacific, the average is about seven or so women in the parliament. In the northern hemisphere, we are looking at 30 to 40 percent of the average number of women in the parliament. Australia is only about 27 to 30 percent of women in the parliament. We are not doing well enough because our goal is to see as many women in the parliament as men, which is 50/50.

Dr Stone said democracy needs to represent its people. She said half of the people in Pakistan and Australia are women. “So why wouldn’t you have fifty percent women in the parliament? Now obviously we are long way from it. Women often have to convince men that they have place in the parliament. It’s not a tradition to see women in the parliament. Women often too have a lot of other roles like child responsibility, from caring perhaps the aging parents, to disabled ones,” she said.

In Australia, she said, child care is very expensive so for women who’s got young children going to parliament is difficult, fund raising for women to campaign is more difficult than man usually.

“So far all those reasons, it is hard but that doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t keep persisting and just coming from the school this morning some of the brightest young women in those schools who were school leaders were saying we want to be politician,” she said.

She said the young women are the future of Pakistan. And as is case in Australia, the young women finishing the secondary schooling want to be women in the parliament and that is magnificent. The democracies will be much better when they have got more women in the parliament. It’s about partnering for democracy and not as a woman overtaking man,” she concluded.