July 30, 2019
Haifa Fahoum Al Kaylani, Founder & Chairman, Arab International Women’s Forum
In September 2018, as Founder & Chairman of the Arab International Women’s Forum, I co-chaired the Women, Water & Youth: Perspectives from the MENA Region conference, held in Amman in partnership with the World Bank Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI). Guest speakers included world class specialists in the areas of sustainability, water resource management, refugee support and education, and women and youth empowerment together with leading NGOs, research institutes and the private sector, representing: The World Bank; The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; the International Labour Organisation; the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; the UN Development Programme; Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia; the Water Authority of Jordan; the Palestinian Water Authority; and the Mediterranean Youth for Water Network, among many others.
Women, Water & Youth brought into focus urgent concerns around sustainability, water scarcity and food insecurity, women’s economic participation and leadership, the refugee crisis, and the ongoing challenge of youth unemployment in the MENA States. Leading experts and representatives of the local, regional and international development communities identified salient environmental, legislative and empowerment issues and set out to elaborate a clear strategy for empowering women and young people through sustainable agriculture. To have clear impact, it would need to engage policy makers, the private sector, development organisations, and women and young people themselves in recognition of the vital roles they play in achieving sustainable agriculture, rural development and food and water security in the region.
Panel discussions spotlighted the link between agriculture and economic growth which, according to World Bank research, accounts for one-third of global GDP. IFPRI, in Agriculture and Economic Transformation in the Middle East and North Africa, also identified agriculture as a strategic sector for ensuring sustainable economic development "given its potential for creating (and maintaining) jobs, implementing agricultural policies in accordance with environmental concerns, food security, and poverty reduction”. In addition, according to IFPRI, "leveraging policies that benefit the agricultural sector can incentivize economic growth by creating synergies with other sectors in the economy”. The panel sessions also linked women’s empowerment and economic growth which is seriously disadvantaged in the region by the low economic participation of women in the region overall, where rural women are bearing the burden of unpaid household and care work and are more inclined towards the informal economy than formal employment or entrepreneurship.
Women, Water & Youth produced a comprehensive Report & Recommendations released in December 2018, calling for improved water governance policies; measuring gender parity in sustainable agriculture; supporting specialised research and data which is lacking in the Arabic language; and linking industry with the agricultural sector to promote research-driven innovation in MENA farming technologies and techniques. Recommendations also called for investment in public and private sector partnerships; supporting women-led sustainability projects and social enterprises; building public awareness of water scarcity and environmental issues through the education system; engaging young people and families / households in water conservation efforts; and addressing the impact of refugee displacement on water scarcity and food security alongside regional concerns around migration, job mobility and freedom of movement which limit innovation, academia and entrepreneurship in the MENA agricultural sector, which is ripe for investment and innovation.
The themes of Women, Water & Youth resonate deeply with me on a personal level, having spent 2017 as a Fellow at Harvard to undertake the Advanced Leadership Initiative and developing, as part of my Fellowship, a sustainability enterprise project which I have launched in pilot phase in Jordan as an innovative solution to key food and water security challenges in the Arab world, titled Ploughing New Ground: Sustainable Agriculture in the MENA Region. The project will deliver a new model for sustainable MENA agriculture, and will integrate new technologies and water-saving techniques to the agricultural sector, aiming to enhance food security, conserve scarce water resources, and create job opportunities for local communities. The project in Jordan is meant to be scaled-up and replicated across the wider MENA region in the years to come.
For all of us in the MENA Region, economic growth and security are intrinsically linked with human security, prosperity, and social cohesion. The Arab world needs a thriving rural economy to meet the challenges of youth unemployment, food insecurity, water scarcity, women’s under-representation in the economy, and to alleviate hunger and poverty challenges. As a region, we need leaders in business, entrepreneurship and social enterprise to discover, create and innovate solutions to the region’s most critical development challenges, primary among them being food and water security.
We have the platforms to steer a prosperous and peaceful future for the Arab region; to lead the way forward in identifying, creating, and promoting viable, sustainable, long-term solutions; to inspire each other in our research, our philanthropy and our working lives; to collaborate and innovate across borders and across cultures; and importantly, to ensure that the voices of women and young people most affected by water challenges, food insecurity, armed conflict and displacement, and reduced economic opportunity, are brought into the conversation. The stability and future prosperity and cohesion of our region depend upon it.
