VOLUME 24/APRIL 2002 sustainable options for ending hunger and poverty Revised June 2002 IFPRI PERSPECTIVES From Relief to Recovery: featured publication Rebuilding Afghanistan Afghanistan’s economic and social indicators could hardly be worse. Over 7 million people face starvation. Afghanistan has the world’s fourth highest child mortality rate: More than 25 percent die before reaching age 5. One-quarter of Afghan children under 5 suffer from moderate to severe wasting. Afghanistan ranks at the bottom of the UN DOWNLOAD AT: www.ifpri.org gender development index and its maternal death rate is one of the highest in the world. large percentage of Afghans are sick, hungry,homeless, and destitute. Nutrition: A Foundation for Many cities have been reduced to Development—Why Practitioners A rubble. Fields and rangelands have been in Development Should Integrate planted with landmines and dessicated by the Nutrition. A set of 12 briefs published by the UN ACC Sub-Committee on worst drought in 30 years. Decades of war Nutrition (SCN) with assistance from have killed, maimed, and displaced millions IFPRI and others. 2002 / 48 pages of people, driving 6 million refugees to neighboring states, Europe,Australia, and Distributed by: UN ACC Sub-Committee on Nutrition America. Chaos, continuous warfare, and c/o World Health Organization Taliban tyranny destroyed most of the 20 Avenue Appia nation’s educational, healthcare, social, CH 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland Telephone:+41-22-791 04 56 administrative, and economic institutions. Fax: +41-22-798 88 91 WFP/Michael Huggins Photo by Email: [email protected] Yet there is hope.With the fall of the Taliban, Web: http://acc.unsystem.org/scn/ girls are flocking back to school, young Agriculture in Afghanistan is supplying tons women and men are taking university of seed to Afghan farmers.That effort, spear- INTERNATIONAL entrance exams, and thousands of educated, headed by the International Centre for FOOD highly trained Afghan exp atriates are organ- Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), relies POLICY izing to return to lend a hand. While private on years of seed testing in Afghanistan by the RESEARCH voluntary organizations and UN emergency Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de INSTITUTE assistance agencies deliver immediate food Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT), and is the first step aid, members of the international communi- in re-establishing Afghanistan’s agricultural 2033 K Street, NW ty have been meeting to help establish an sector.As farming and agricultural production Washington, DC 20006-1002 USA interim central government, monitor increases, food aid will have to be phased out Telephone:+1-202-862-5600 Afghanistan’s transition, and pledge technical so as not to distort markets. That’s when Fax: +1-202-467-4439 assistance and development funds. IFPRI’s strengths will be needed. Email: [email protected] Web: www.ifpri.org Is There an Economist in the House? “IFPRI’s expertise in designing and imple- Writer and Editor: Joanna Berkman Like the doctor who steps forward to help in menting government policies for food, agri- Art and Production Manager: Evelyn Banda culture, and the environment can help us Designer: Joan Kirstin Stephens a medical emergency,IFPRI economists are Illustration: John Overmeyer joining initiatives to share their knowledge apply the many lessons learned in other so that Afghanistan can rebuild rapidly.The countries to rebuilding Afghanistan,”IFPRI Copyright © 2002 International Food Policy Director General Per Pinstrup-Andersen Research Institute.All rights reserved. Future Harvest Consortium to Rebuild says.“We have long collaborated with Pakistan on government policies to improve IFPRI’s expertise in designing and implementing food security in the region. A great deal of government policies for food, agriculture, and the environment research on the link between poverty and hunger on the one hand and armed conflict can help us apply the many lessons learned in other countries on the other makes it clear that unless to rebuilding Afghanistan. human suffering is alleviated, we will not be able to avoid future conflicts in Central Asia.” Until 1988, livestock accounted for 40 And Afghanistan’s 1964 constitution includ- Ashok Gulati, director of IFPRI’s Markets percent of Afghanistan’s national exports. ed an equal rights amendment, which fur- and Structural Studies Division, attended Devastated during the war years, the live- ther guaranteed women’s right to vote. the Future Harvest Consortium stakeholder stock sector, which includes sedentary meeting convened by ICARDA in farmers, transhumant tribes, and nomadic The communist government established Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in late January 2002. herders, suffered further as water shortages with Soviet backing in the late 1970s Seventy-four participants from 34 interna- destroyed pastures and caused animal brought unanticipated benefits to women: tional organizations gathered on short deaths, crisis sales, and low fertility and Bride price and forced marriage were notice, at their own expense, with a single replacement rates. The FAO/WFP mission banned, the minimum age for marriage purpose: to help Afghan farmers restore report estimated that herd numbers had was raised, and both women and men were food security. The stakeholders developed a plummeted further by 40 percent from educated. These reforms were not well plan to deliver high-quality seeds immedi- already lowered 1998 levels. received by tribal chiefs in rural areas or by ately to Afghan farmers, but recognized that fundamentalist Islamic leaders, and mainly rapid needs assessments would have to be “The challenge of Afghanistan is staring us benefited women in larger cities. conducted as soon as the security situation right in the face,”Gulati observes.“If we within Afghanistan allows. fail to rise to the occasion, our commit- Before the Taliban took power in 1996, ment to poverty alleviation, our credibility, many highly trained urban women worked Revive Afghan Agriculture and our compassion will all be in question. outside the home, bringing in earnings on The agricultural sector was the mainstay of If the world wants it, ending hunger in which their families depended. The Afghanistan’s economy and its regeneration Afghanistan can easily be accomplished, Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human is fundamental to the nation’s recovery. but we must offer more than food security. Rights in Afghanistan estimated that With massive and wise investments in seed We must seek justice as well.” women in Kabul, the capital, made up over and crop improvement and diversification, 50 percent of students and professors at soil and water management, horticulture, These goals can be achieved in part by tak- Kabul University,70 percent of school- and livestock, the agricultural sector can ing the following priority actions. teachers, 50 percent of civilian government thrive again (see page 4). workers, and 40 percent of doctors. Recognize and Guarantee Women’s Prior to the Soviet and civil wars, 85 per- Human Rights The Taliban’s worst excesses may be over. cent of Afghans depended on agriculture, A country cannot succeed in “eradicating But the aftermath of the Taliban’s denial of horticulture, and livestock farming for poverty unless women are healthy,educat- education, work, and medical care to their livelihoods. Between 1979 (when the ed, empowered in the economic and Afghan women remains. Speaking at a Soviets invaded) and 1992, food produc- political field, and protected from gender- World Bank panel in March 2002, Sima tion in Afghanistan dropped by 40 per based violence,”the United Nations Wali detailed the daunting challenge cent. Only 12 percent of Afghanistan’s Development Programme (UNDP) ahead.“Afghan women are the most land is arable, of which half is irrigated. affirmed in a 2002 report. None of these oppressed in the world, and the most Only 40 percent of arable land is under conditions exists in Afghanistan today. undernourished members of society: 12 cultivation due to drought, the shortage million Afghan women live in abject of seeds and other inputs, and the collapse In just five years, the Taliban reversed the poverty. An Afghan woman dies in child- of irrigation infrastructure.A joint 2001 progress Afghan women had made through- birth every half hour. Eighty percent of report by the Food and Agriculture out the 20th century. According to Sima women are illiterate. Seventy percent of Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Wali,Afghan activist and president of tuberculosis cases are women. There are and the World Food Programme (WFP) Refugee Women in Development,Afghan more than 40,000 widows in Kabul alone. Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission women gained the vote in the early 1920s, Women are struggling with huge psycho- to Afghanistan estimated that “about one- when American suffragists were still fighting logical trauma.The physical burka is much half of irrigated area had gone out of use” for enfranchisement. In the 1960s, the easier to lift than the emotional one,”she and that “rainfed crops (wheat and barley) Afghan government made wearing the veil said.“That will take time.” had almost totally failed.” and seclusion of women discretionary. 2 IFPRI PERSPECTIVES Restoring Afghan women’s human rights Educate to Develop Human Capital WHAT IS THE “TRAGEDY depends on peace and stable government, The secret schools that Afghan women OF THE OMMONS * which are by no means assured. In testimo- spontaneously created for their daughters C ”? ny last year before the U.S.