Rural women producers and cooperatives in conflicts settings in the Arab States

Ongoing violent conflicts accentuate the challenges that women and men face in the rural areas of Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The potential of cooperatives for sharing risk, pooling resources, learning together, generating income, and balancing work and family responsibilities, has yet to be actualized. Cooperatives in the three countries remain marginal, and often organizations labelled as cooperatives do not adhere by cooperative principles. Since donor dependency has become pervasive, interventions should focus on skills development for the sustainability of cooperatives. Training needs adaptation to the local context, and gender responsiveness is necessary for the success of interventions. This paper explores the conditions under which cooperatives can be a vehicle for the empowerment of rural women in conflict settings in the context of three different conflict settings in Arab States. Its findings are based on previous and ongoing work of the International Labour Organization Regional Office for Arab States in Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Lebanon. It focuses on evidence emerging from the adaptation and implementation of ILO training tools for women’s entrepreneurship and gender equality in the three countries.

Publisher: 
International Labour Organization
تاريخ النشر: 
الخميس, 1 يناير 2009
نوع المورد: 
Paper
حلة: 
Gender, Agriculture & Rural Development
randomness