For decades, Ukraine has been the breadbasket to the Global South. Ukrainian and Russian grains provide more than one-third of the wheat imported by 45 African and least-developed countries. Shortages of food, fuel and fertilizers from Ukraine and Russia is having a compounding effect—the resulting rise in fuel and fertilizer costs are hampering the ability of smallholder farmers (roughly half of them women) to produce and store enough food in the coming seasons. In the last five months alone, prices of major food crops have risen by 40%, accounting for 400 million of the people who are now food insecure. The war in Ukraine could be the tipping point that plunges already fragile families into deeper states of malnutrition.
If we do not act now, 50 million people who face emergency levels of food insecurity in the Global South could be on the brink of famine. Among the most vulnerable are women and children. Women and girls often eat last and least, and without proper nutrition, mothers can die during pregnancy, experience stillbirths, or their babies suffer developmental delays from the start. For the children who do survive, malnutrition can cause permanent, widespread damage to their growth, development and overall wellbeing, particularly in the first five years when their brains develop most rapidly. Not investing in healthy women puts future generations—both boys and girls—at risk of unhealthy lives. To reverse that outcome, CARE invests in breaking the cycle of malnutrition, and that starts with women and girls.
With 76 years of experience responding to natural and human-caused crises, CARE has a solid evidence base that shows women and girls are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and other humanitarian emergencies. But the humanitarian community, including the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC, considered the gold standard in assessing food security levels globally), systematically overlooks the needs of women and fails to adequately analyze and quantify how gender differences impact food-insecure communities. Given gender norms and roles, women are often responsible for shopping and preparing the family’s food, yet far too frequently they are the ones who eat last and least. Men often lead decision-making around addressing hunger in their communities. These imbalances hurt entire communities because the cycle is perpetual—people living in poverty are more susceptible to malnutrition, which can lead to increased healthcare costs, reduced productivity and limited ability to earn income.
Providing immediate food and basic needs support, along with investing in accelerated agricultural support to build resilience for families on the periphery of malnutrition, are short- and medium-term measures that, when implemented in tandem, move families and communities onto a path to better health. But we must do more to ensure that families can weather future crises. We must also influence change in the policy structures that support them so that women, children and their families avoid harsh outcomes like migration, further conflict, sexual exploitation and death. These are all well-documented outcomes of food and nutrition insecurity. We simply cannot stand idle as the consequences of the hunger crisis are compounding, especially for women and children.
With your investment and partnership, CARE can respond to the millions of families nearing the brink of famine and ensure that communities we work hard to empower survive the shocks that threaten their access to nutritious food.
CARE’s full-scale strategy for response
Women and children facing hunger and severe malnutrition need more than food aid. Since 1945, CARE has proven time and again that the best safety net, particularly for women and children, combines both emergency response and building resilience long before needs are life-threatening.
That’s why CARE has launched a $250 million comprehensive response to the global hunger crisis—so that families now on the brink of famine avoid the direst of consequences and smallholder farmer communities on the cusp of malnutrition ramp up production and tip the balance of nutrition in their favor. Our response bridges the full spectrum of food and nutrition insecurity—from emergency response and treatment for severe malnutrition, to the transition to short-term recovery and longer-term resilience building that prepares families to weather future shocks. We also seek to ensure that governments and communities in less-developed nations build strength and policies that help these interventions stick.
CARE’s two-year response includes a three-pronged approach: 1) immediate food and nutritional assistance for families most at risk of hunger and severe malnutrition; 2) accelerated training and inputs for smallholder farmers—especially women farmers—who are most susceptible to fertilizer and fuel shortages and thus, reduced harvests and deeper malnutrition this year; and 3) rallying key stakeholders in the food security and nutrition arena—from engaging private sector partners to advocating with developing country governments, donor country governments like the U.S., and global actors like international donors, to prevent repeat crises.
To save lives now and sow resilience for tomorrow, we must look beyond food aid to address food and nutrition security and let women lead the way. CARE’s strength as a global organization allows us to lean into broad expertise and simultaneously fortify three components of food security—increasing the supply of food, improving effective demand by increasing access and a person’s ability to pay, and addressing the true impacts of food scarcity on nutrition.
Given the unfolding nature of the hunger crisis, CARE’s immediate humanitarian assistance will prevent women, children and families in countries where severe malnutrition rates are highest from reaching possible famine levels. Simultaneously, we will address fuel and fertilizer shortages and rising costs in as many as 540 communities in countries where farming is becoming cost prohibitive, and families are on the cusp of deeper malnutrition. Countries like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe are showing alarming declines in access to nutritious food and alarming malnutrition levels. To create a safety net for the future and strengthen less-developed nations’ ability to mitigate crises of this magnitude, CARE will work with the private sector, governments and bilateral donors to access alternate food, fuel and fertilizer supplies, and change the policies and systems that create unstable environments and unfavorable conditions at local, country
and international levels. Our comprehensive approach will be adapted to the specific needs and contexts of each country or region and scale up as need and resources warrant. These initial focus countries and communities are ones CARE knows well, where our presence will allow us to act quickly—with a core focus on women, children and vulnerable groups.
