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Jill Hagey, Behind the Numbers
Sahel Drought: Putting Malnutrition in the News
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The original version of this article, by Jill Hagey, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s Behind the Numbers blog.
Over the past few months, the Sahel drought has sparked attention of news media and concerned citizens around the world. Throughout this media blitz, I have been struck by the sharp contrast between this coverage and how the devastating effects of malnutrition are usually portrayed. Malnutrition is often overlooked in favor of more “newsworthy” diseases, and it takes a crisis to focus our attention on this public health issue. Yet an emergency such as this drought – affecting more than 18 million people, including nearly 2 million children – is difficult to ignore.
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Nile Basin at a Turning Point as Political Changes Roil Balance of Power and Competing Demands Proliferate
›September 4, 2012 // By Carolyn Lamere
In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat famously said that “the only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” Sadat’s message was clear: the Nile is a matter of national security for Egypt.
Indeed, Egypt relies on the Nile for 95 percent of its water. But it is not the only state with an interest in the world’s longest river. There are 11 states in the Nile River basin, which stretches from Africa’s Great Lakes region – Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – to the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands through South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.
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Changing Cities: Climate, Youth, and Land Markets in Urban Areas
›The number of urban slum dwellers worldwide is staggering. According to UN-Habitat, 827.6 million people live in slums around the world. Despite meeting a Millennium Development Goal to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, the total number of people living in these areas still increased by 55 million between 2000 and 2010. By 2020, the world slum population is projected to reach 889 million. With the majority of people now living in cities, urban priorities are synonymous with human security and environmental sustainability and must be accounted for in the global development agenda.
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Should AFRICOM Leave Development to the Professionals?
›August 30, 2012 // By Schuyler Null
Since its inception, there’s been a great deal of prognostication about the role and goals of the U.S. military’s newest regional command, AFRICOM. The smallest of the six regional commands, in terms of staff and budget, its objectives have included traditional roles like building local military capacities, confronting transnational threats (terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, small arms, drugs, etc.), and helping to mitigate violent conflicts, but also more development-oriented goals, like fighting HIV/AIDs and malaria, “strengthening democratic principles,” and “fostering the conditions that lead to a peaceful, stable, and economically strong Africa.”
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The Economist
In Poor Countries, Is Lower Fertility Bad for Equality?
›August 23, 2012 // By Wilson Center Staff
The original version of this article appeared on The Economist.
Economies benefit when people start having smaller families. As fertility falls, the share of working-age adults in the population creeps up, laying the foundation for the so-called “demographic dividend.” With fewer children, parents invest more in each child’s education, increasing human capital. People tend to save more for their retirement, so more money is available for investment. And women take paid jobs, boosting the size of the workforce. All this is good for economic growth and household income. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study estimated that a decrease of Nigeria’s fertility rate by one child per woman would boost GDP per head by 13 percent over 20 years. But not every consequence of lower fertility is peachy. A new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health identifies another and surprising effect: higher inequality in the short term.
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Stress Levels of Major Global Aquifers Revealed by Groundwater Footprint Study
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In the “first spatially explicit comparison of groundwater use, availability, and environmental flow for aquifers globally,” a new article in Nature finds that the “size of the global groundwater footprint is currently about 3.5 times the actual area of aquifers.” An aquifer’s footprint is the theoretical size it would need to be to sustainably support use at its current rate, so groundwater footprints being much larger than their corresponding aquifers is a sign of overuse.
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Inside U.S. Climate Security Policy: Geoff Dabelko Interviewed by ISN
›August 20, 2012 // By Kate Diamond
Climate change “has been thought of in many quarters as something that affects folks ‘over there,’ and not as much domestically, and I think that’s a mistake,” said ECSP’s Geoff Dabelko in a recent podcast with the Zurich-based International Relations and Security Network. “I think folks are coming to a realization that there are very high economic, political, and ultimately security stakes for the United States.”
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Taking On Domestic Violence in Post-Conflict Liberia
›Liberia is a case study in post-conflict violence against women, said panelists at the Wilson Center on July 24. “Confined merely to performing household chores and childrearing duties, from early childhood, women and girls have been socialized into subservience and powerlessness and acceptance of domestic abuse as a norm,” Annette Kiawu, deputy minister for research and technical services at the Liberian Ministry of Gender and Development, told the audience. [Video Below]
Kiawu was joined by Pamela Shifman of the Novo Foundation and Esther Karnley and Elisabeth Roesch of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). They discussed the prevalence of domestic violence in Liberia after the 14-year civil war, which ended in 2003.
Violence Stemming from Changing Norms
Kiawu pointed to women’s changing roles in Liberia as a source of household tension. She noted that women are increasingly “demanding a greater role in household decision making,” which some men see as “encroachment on their sphere of influence.”
“According to the LDHS [Liberia Demographic and Health Survey], the persistence of domestic violence is directly linked to the increased status of women on the one hand and men’s [perception] of loss of power and authority on the other,” she said. Some men’s urge to assert dominance is exacerbated by higher levels of alcohol abuse and a tendency towards violence learned during the civil war.
There has been legislation against gender-based violence – including the Rape Amendment Act, also known as the “revised rape law,” the Revised Gender-Based Violence Action Plan, and the African Union Protocol – as well as action plans and community-based groups meant to decrease the rate of domestic violence, like the Gender-Based Violence Network, an initiative designed to increase community ownership of domestic violence issues and improve response at the grassroots level. But despite these advances, Kiawu stressed that there still is a long way to go, saying that increased funding and coordination between domestic and international agencies and the Liberian government is necessary to have a real impact on the lives of the “countless women” whose lives are threatened by domestic violence.
Making Reality Match Rhetoric
Pamela Shifman agreed that domestic violence prevention programs need more funding. “So often in conflict-affected settings we hear that we need to address other issues first…that domestic violence is a back-burner issue,” she said. Domestic violence is often perceived to be “not that serious” when compared to other issues in conflict-prone and post-conflict countries.
But Shifman argued that divorcing domestic violence from other types of violence is problematic. “Violence in the home normalizes violence in the street, normalizes violence in the community, and normalizes violence by the state,” she said.
NoVo is one of the few private organizations which prioritizes domestic violence and gender equity, Shifman said, but she asserted that all humanitarian organizations should devote time and money to these issues, saying that “if we ignore domestic violence, all of the other investments we make to improve the quality of life for communities will suffer.”
Empowering women can have significant results for the whole community. Shifman remarked that “investing in women is smart economics,” citing studies which suggest directing funds towards women “pays off at huge levels” for women’s families and communities. But when women experience violence, “their potential is thwarted,” she said. “They suffer, their families suffer, their community suffers, the entire nation suffers.”
Programs targeting domestic violence need greater awareness, more long-term commitment, and more funding, she said. “We don’t expect that violence is going to end overnight – no deep-seated social problem will be solved that quickly,” she said. “In order to make a dent in improving the lives of girls and women and ending violence against girls and women, we need more direct funding” from private and public sources.
“To put it bluntly, I think the reality needs to match the rhetoric,” Shifman concluded.
Perspectives from the Field: Social Isolation
Esther Karnley described the results of interviews conducted with Liberian women, both survivors of domestic violence and fellow community members. She found that a key reason women stay in abusive relationships is financial dependence. “Most of them said, ‘it’s because we depend on the men for everything… we don’t have any money, we are not empowered financially, we depend on the men for everything. Because of that, we remain in that relationship and we get killed.’”
She added that social isolation means that many women lack the resources to leave a relationship. “We are isolated socially, we don’t have access to services, we are all by ourselves,” they told her. Without support from friends, relatives, or organizations, it can be difficult to find the means to relocate.
Part of the problem in Liberia is the prevalence of informal education, especially Sande bush schools – schools run by a traditional women’s society designed to prepare girls for marriage, teaching them traditional housekeeping methods and culminating in female circumcision. Girls leave home to attend these traditional schools for several months, which severely curtails their access to formal education. Kiawu reported that “over 60 percent of girls attending Sande school drop out of regular school.” This means that “successive generations of young children, especially young girls, are expected to forgo formal education in favor of attending the Sande school.”
In addition to formal education, Karnley said financial empowerment and legislation holding perpetrators of domestic violence accountable for their actions would enable more women to leave abusive relationships.
Reaching Both Women and Men
Each of the panelists recognized that working against domestic violence requires comprehensive societal reforms. Karnley stressed that the impetus to begin working with men came from Liberian women. “Initially when we started working on GBV issues, we talked to women, and then the women came and said, ‘OK, you talk to us every day, and when we go home, we go and meet fire. Can you also talk to our men?’” In response, the IRC developed a 16-week program designed to change men’s behavior and views about violence and relationships. Karnley also mentioned a desire to reach out to the religious community to change the constant focus on the man as the head of a relationship to one based on love.
The Liberian government is also working with churches and mosques to change norms that encourage the subjugation of women, including work with a network of religious leaders known as Christian/Muslim United against SGBV (sexual and gender based violence). Kiawu said this organization emphasizes partnership within a marriage and teaching equality to children in the home. The panelists also mentioned additional efforts to increase the responsiveness and sensitivity of the police and judicial system to domestic violence issues, as well as the need for resources like safe houses to provide relief to survivors.
“The family, far from being off limits, has to be a priority for us in the humanitarian community as we help to rebuild nations where peace not only exists between nations, and among nations, and among communities, but among families,” Shifman contended. Kiawu agreed, adding that without interventions, violence and isolation prevent women “from taking advantage of opportunities that peace presents.”
Event Resources: Photo Credit: A woman prays during a Sunday morning service in Monrovia, courtesy of Bruce Strong/Newhouse School.
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