Month: September 2022

Rome — The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today welcomed an $83 million contribution from the United States of America designed to bolster the agency’s emergency and resilience programmes in Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Sudan, as well as in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, the Sahel and the West Africa region.

It follows a recent commitment of $80 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) specifically focused on improving food security and nutrition in Afghanistan.

“We are grateful to the United States of America for this important contribution towards FAO’s mandate,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. “Safeguarding the rural livelihoods of the vulnerable is central to averting catastrophe and saving lives through the development of local production. Such funding is critical to respond agilely and at scale in food crisis contexts.”

Given its mandate to end hunger, its longstanding country presence, and its substantial expertise and experience in both humanitarian and development contexts, FAO has a unique role to play in preventing and addressing acute hunger and supporting countries that are experiencing food crises return to a path of growth and prosperity.

Protecting livelihoods by providing emergency agricultural assistance from the onset of a crisis enables people to produce food and earn an income, while a rapid and efficient response to agricultural threats and emergencies saves lives, promotes recovery and reduces the gap between dependency on food assistance and self-reliance.

The new contribution was announced by Ambassador Cindy McCain, Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the UN agencies in Rome. The funds are designed to improve the availability and access to food in crises contexts, by supplying aid and technical assistance to smallholder farmers and livestock-dependent communities, focusing on crop and livestock production.

The Unites States of America has been the largest resource partner of FAO’s humanitarian and resilience programme since 2017. The latest contribution, part of the annual support from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, represents a three-fold increase in funds from the previous year.

Bolstering emergency and resilience efforts

FAO’s work in Ethiopia stands to receive $32 million in emergency support to improve crop production in the Tigray region, where conflict is a key driver of severe food shortages.

FAO is already scaling up the urgent delivery of fertilizers in the northern Ethiopian region to help farmers sow their fields in the midst of the crucial planting season. The new funds will facilitate the targeted distribution of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers and seeds, and the training of 344 000 households (involving an estimated 1 720 000 people) on fertilizer application and handling, good agronomic practices, post-harvest handling and value addition.

A further $30 million of the USA contribution announced today have been earmarked for emergency livelihood assistance to safeguard food and nutrition security in Afghanistan, where local food production and the incomes of the most vulnerable rural families have been affected by multiple shocks, including back-to-back droughts and a deepening economic crisis.

More than 70 percent of Afghans live in rural areas, and millions of men, women and children could face catastrophe in 2022 unless agriculture and livestock production are continuously supported.

FAO plans to use the funds there to improve the food and nutrition security status of 2 065 000 vulnerable and marginalized people through the distribution of winter wheat cultivation packages, a livestock protection package for herders in areas affected by drought, and multi-purpose cash transfers to households without access to land and limited labour force within the family.

An additional $15 million have been earmarked to bolster food security and livelihoods in Sudan, while the remaining amounts will target people in need in Burkina Faso and the region of West Africa and help mitigate the impact of an outbreak of African Swine Fever in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

As the new school year begins in many parts of the world, new UNESCO data shows that 244 million children and youth between the ages of 6 and 18 worldwide are still out of school. Audrey Azoulay, Director-General, calls for collective mobilization to ensure that the right of every child to access quality education is respected.

The new estimates, published online, show that sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the most children and youth out of school, with a total of 98 million children. It is also the only region where this number is increasing: out-of-school rates are falling more slowly than the rate at which the school-age population is growing. The region with the second highest out-of-school population is Central and Southern Asia, with 85 million. The data per country is available in interactive visualizations on the VIEW website.

She will renew this call at the Transforming Education Summit to be held on September 19 convened by the UN Secretary General, which will bring together Heads of State and Governments.

The gender gap is closing

The new UNESCO estimates confirm that the difference in the rate of girls and boys out of school has closed worldwide. The gaps of 2.5 percentage points among primary school age children worldwide and of 3.9 percentage points among upper secondary school age youth in 2000 have been reduced to zero – however, regional disparities persist.

New method for more reliable figures

Multiple data sources – including information from surveys and censuses – have been cross-referenced by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report experts, in order that the figures reflect reality as closely as possible. It is the first time that this methodology, previously used to estimate flagship health indicators, has been used in education, marking a significant improvement in the robustness of the estimates.

Important data gaps have been filled in countries that have large out of school numbers but where no administrative data of good quality has been available for over a decade, such as Nigeria which has an estimated 20.2 million children and youth out of school, Ethiopia (10.5 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (5.9 million) and Kenya (1.8 million).

With UNESCO’s help, 90% of countries have now set national benchmarks to assess progress towards quality education for all by 2030, including on out-of-school rates.

Source: UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization