Continuing with the second of a three part blog by Ibrahim Alwazir, Oxfam’s Social Media Officer in Yemen.
Part 2: A generation being deprived of education
Ahmed Saleh is 39 years old, is a father of 10 and lives in Al-Shanitifah village in Amran governorate. He works as a farmer during the rainy season in summer – he grows millet – and as a porter outside the village during the rest of the year. Despite the work, he is barely earning enough to feed his big family. He never had the opportunity to provide clean water to his family, because he was never able to afford the clean water from the water trucks that usually cost him 12,000 YER, which is more than what he makes.
In the village, men gather every morning outside their small houses to discuss rumours of available jobs, unavailable cash and the disappearing hope that they will have something for their families to eat by noon.
Left: Abdullah*, a fourth-grade student in Khamer district of Amran governorate, holds his notebooks. Photo: Ameen Al-Ghaberi/Gabreez. Right: Wadi Akhraf -Water source, in Habor Zulaimat, Amran governorate Wadea Al-Mekhlafi / Oxfam Yemen.
In these villages, men only have two main job opportunities: either farm or perform hard-labour tasks such as construction or carrying goods. Many lack proper education or vocational training, making it hard for them to perform other jobs or better serve their communities.
Farming usually is seasonal and that is due to the lack of agricultural training, research and funding, as many farmers are unaware of the best practices to enhance their crops or to make use of the land all year long. There is also no storage capacity for the crops to be sold during the entire year. Most fruits and vegetables are available only during certain seasons, while their prices change based on supply and demand throughout the year.
I remember the beauty of many farms we had passed by and it seems that Yemenis pay as much attention to their farms as they do to their children and houses. One can see that the farms are neat, well-built and have enough supplies of water and fertilizers that nourish plants and satisfy viewers' eyes. No matter how isolated the farms were, water is regularly delivered to them through pipes or water-trucks to the extent that plants started to believe they are growing somewhere near the equator.
Yemenis are known to be the first to build agricultural terraces over mountains, to make use of rain to water the lands. They unfortunately never managed to come up with an idea to make water continuously available to their houses and save their wives and children the troubles of fetching water from faraway and sometimes dangerous locations.
For thousands of children in Yemen, walking every day with heavy jerrycans filled with water is more common than attending school. Some rural communities in Yemen do not see school as mandatory or necessary for children as they sometimes believe that men don't need an education to work and women don't need schooling to get married and have children. Many cannot afford either the fees or the supplies needed to attend school.
If the school is nearby and there are no chores to be done, then children can go but only until sixth grade, when they will then be old enough to help their families inside or outside the house. Girls help their mothers with house chores and take care of younger siblings, while boys help their fathers with farming, livestock or just hang around with their friends when their parents are busy.
The war has strongly exacerbated this situation – schools have been bombed, destroyed or occupied, and an entire generation is now being deprived of education.
One of the world's gravest humanitarian crises.
More than 14,600 civilians have been killed or injured during three years of devastating conflict in Yemen and over 2,200 others have died of cholera, mostly children and the elderly. Over three million people have been forced to flee their homes due to the bombing and fighting. The country is on the brink of famine and is also now suffering the largest ever outbreak of cholera since records began, as nearly 1 million cases have been reported. 22 million people in Yemen are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance, the greatest number in any country in the world.
Oxfam is there
Since July 2015, Oxfam has reached more than 2.8 million people with humanitarian assistance, with the help of our local partners in Yemen. Help includes water and sanitation services, cash assistance and food vouchers.
We are delivering emergency aid but we urgently need your help to do more.
Knowledge is power – just ask these women from Nairobi. They are all members of the Oxfam project, Wezesha Jamii – Swahili for ‘empowering communities’ – which, among others, provides training, supports job opportunities and promotes equality.
The majority of these vulnerable women, who live in informal settlements across the Kenyan capital, are either domestic workers or small-scale traders. Before getting involved in the project, many of them knew nothing about their rights or entitlements – and were often exploited by their employers.
Left: Sheillah Achieng and her baby in their apartment in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Katie G. Nelson/Oxfam Right: Doreen styles a woman's hair in her salon in Mukuru. Photo: Katie G. Nelson/Oxfam
Sheillah Achieng (28), who left school with few qualifications, says domestic work is the only job she can do. She describes how a former employer once threatened her with a knife when she asked for her wages. But since becoming a member of Wezesha Jamii, she understands that she can go somewhere for help.
“Now I am enlightened and if something similar happened,” says the mother of three. “I would go to the police station. I know there are some offices we can go to.”
The project also taught Sheillah about her rights around maternity leave. Before her youngest child was born, she asked her employer if she could have some time off. “They told me I could have three months… I understood that if you are pregnant you are due some leave. I didn’t know that before."
“I am very happy that I learned my rights about maternity leave. I didn’t know before that three months is my right. Normally you would get two weeks and then find someone in your job.”
The advice she’s received through Wezesha Jamii (WJ) has made Sheillah realise that she wants better treatment at work: “What I want is for more employers to treat us as human beings. I feel very bad to see employers not treating us well. “I feel more confident and I have more energy. I feel encouraged that I know my rights.”
Elsewhere, Doreen Muththoni has tried to make a go of various business ideas down through the years. But from selling bread, to cooking and selling goat meat, she has struggled to earn enough money. After becoming a member of Wezesha Jamii, she was trained in how to develop a good business idea, how to budget and how to manage her money.
Now running a thriving beauty and hair salon, Doreen says: “The project helped me choose the business I could do and one that could bring me more income than the meat business. What I do now is sell hair products and also do women’s hair.
“Through the training they showed me how to save, I didn’t save before… I can save more than 10,000 KSh through my business.”
These days Doreen has no problem paying school fees for her three children – not only that, she has opened savings accounts for them too.
“We enjoy many things now we don’t have so many problems,” she says. “We feel free and happy now. I am filled with joy. The things we are doing, WJ has been able to help me so much and now I know more than what I used to know.”
For some young people, the road to education can be long and arduous – quite literally. In Balaka District, southern Malawi, where many schoolgirls live up to 25km from the classroom, getting there used to be a struggle. There were no buses or cars to transport them to school – they had to walk.
The two-hour journeys on foot were exhausting. Many of the students couldn’t concentrate when they eventually arrived at school; others simply stayed at home despite being desperate to learn. Some would eventually drop out altogether.
It was a vicious cycle – one that Oxfam decided to tackle by distributing bikes to schoolgirls in the region. Esnat*, one of 30 students to receive a bicycle, used to make a five-hour roundtrip to school on foot. “The journey was hard,” says the 15-year-old pupil, who lives 25km from her school. “I would be tired and used to doze off in class.
Left: Esnat* with her Oxfam bike. Photo: Corinna Kern. Right: Zainab* was always late for school. Photo: Corinna Kern
“I would sleep when I got home, I didn’t study as I was too tried. My body and legs would ache; sometimes I would skip lessons. I was underperforming in my lessons because I was either absent or not concentrating.”
Since getting a bike, Esnat* no longer feels as tired and can study properly: “I am excited about my bike; I will be able to complete my education. Now it takes less than one hour to get to school. I start lessons with my friends so I feel equal to them.
“I want to be a nurse. I have had that passion ever since I was younger. I want to help the sick and my community because we don’t have many nurses. I want to earn money to help my family.”
Another schoolgirl who benefitted from Oxfam’s bike project is 14-year-old Alice*, who also wants to be a nurse. Describing her old commute to school as a “bad experience”, she says: “I would go to school on Monday but then on a Tuesday I would be absent as I was so sick and tired. I would miss one day a week and go in four days. I forced myself to go. I was arriving at school so tired. I couldn’t concentrate as had I no time to rest. I tried to work hard but I was just so tired.
Left: Girls from Chembera secondary school, Chembera village, Balaka District, with their bicycles. Photo: Corinna Kern. Right: Alice* used to get sick regularly. Photo: Corinna Kern
“We got the bikes two weeks ago. I felt excited and hoped that I would do better in class. Now I travel the same distance but I am not as tired. I still leave at 6am but now I get to school at 6.30am. I am hopeful that I will finish my education and get a good job.”
Before she got her bike, Zainab* – who lives 18km from school – was always late for class and often missed out on exams. “I was so tired, I would spend lots of time stopping on the way to rest my legs so I would be late for school,” says Zainab* (15). “I would miss out on exams and there was no way to make up classes. If you missed a lesson that lesson would be gone. Now I don’t miss any lessons.”
Christmas songs playing in shops, lights strewn between buildings on city streets, shopping windows decorated with evergreen trees and holly, rosy cheeks on passers-by. The Christmas season has officially begun.
This also means crowded shops, long queues, and heavy bags. Ba-humbug!
Instead of enduring the crowds, waiting in queues and braving the cold, consider nestling up to a warm cup of tea with your internet browser opened to Oxfam Unwrapped.
Oxfam Unwrapped offers 17 unique and unexpected gifts ranging from €5/£5 to €1,000/£926. Whether it’s a cooking stove or aclutch of chicks, each gift funds Oxfam’s work around the world. Don’t worry… a clutch of chicks won’t arrive on your doorstep. Your gift donation goes toward poor families and communities that need it most.
Leave the soap and lotion gift baskets at the shops. Instead, purchase our soap stocking filler for a family member. Money raised from your donation supports humanitarian work from our Saving Lives fund. It provides people like Binta and her daughter Fati in Niger with hygiene training to keep them from illness and deadly diseases.
Want to get something sweet for a friend? Instead of picking up the predictable box of chocolates, make a donation to our Livelihoods fund by buying a honeybees gift card. This purchase helps fund the communities who depend on animals for their livelihoods. It empowers people like Augustina in Ghana. Through an Oxfam-supported beekeeping project, she was able to earn additional income to pay her children’s school fees.
When drought struck Somaliland, Faria moved with her children to Karasharka Camp where Oxfam provided safe water. This Christmas, give something better than a bottle of wine or bubbly to your colleague. Consider making a donation to our Water for All fund by purchasing safe water for a family gift card. This gift provides poor communities with safe access to water through pumps, tanks, taps and purification systems.
Your unexpected gift card from the Unwrapped campaign provides the tools, training and resources to support and empower communities. While bringing a smile to your loved one’s face, you will also be building brighter, happier futures. Happy shopping!
Just a third of the $100bn [approx. €86bn/£78bn] tax that companies dodge in poor countries annually is enough to cover the bill for essential healthcare that could prevent the needless deaths of eight million mothers, babies and children, Oxfam revealed today as it launched a hard-hitting film illustrating the human cost of tax avoidance on the world’s poorest.
Experts estimate that $30bn [approx. €25.8bn/£23bn] is needed each year to pay for basic healthcare such as vaccinations, midwives and diarrhoea treatment that could prevent an average of 7.8m children and 210,000 women dying in 74 countries with large numbers of people living in poverty.
Jim Clarken, Oxfam Ireland’s Chief Executive, said: “Tax dodgers may not be literally stealing medicines from the pockets of the poorest but they are depriving poor countries of billions that could be invested in healthcare.
“Oxfam works in some of the poorest countries in the world and sees the impacts of tax dodging every day. For instance, we work in Tanzania which has an annual health budget of just €17 per person. Every medicine that is not bought for the lack of government funds due to tax dodging affects thousands of men, women and children across the world.
“While corporate tax avoidance strips developing countries of vital funds needed for hospitals, millions of the world’s poorest people are missing out on basic medical treatment that could save their lives and help them escape hardship. There can be no excuse for delaying tough action against tax dodging.
“As the EU tax transparency process is at a standstill, the Irish and UK governments should lead the way in helping to ensure companies pay their fair share of taxes everywhere they do business.
“Ireland should agree legislation with its EU partners to ensure that multinationals publically report on a country by country basis where they make their profits and pay their taxes.
“Making this information public will give both policy makers and the public the opportunity to understand how a country’s corporate tax system is actually operating, and provide them with the information to review and change it.
Oxfam is urging the UK Chancellor Phillip Hammond to use next month’s Budget to commit to implementing tougher tax laws for British multinationals, including those that operate in developing countries, by the end of 2019. As movement towards an EU tax transparency deal has stalled, it is calling on him to push ahead and build on the leadership some UK companies have already shown.
More than a year since the Government passed legislation to enable the introduction of comprehensive public country by country reporting for UK-based companies and nearly two years since the last Conservative government agreed the case had been made for the change, it is still no closer to being a reality.
Poor countries are twice as dependent as rich countries on corporate tax revenue as a proportion of the money they have available to buy medicines, pay nurses and pipe clean water to people’s homes. There is evidence to show that when poor countries increase their tax revenue – in particular from corporate and income tax – they spend more on healthcare, leading to healthier populations.
Greater tax transparency would make it easier to verify whether companies’ tax bills are in line with their real economic activity in every country where they do business – and to hold them to account if not.
However, until these public reporting requirements are mandatory for all large businesses, widespread tax avoidance will continue to deprive governments rich and poor of revenue needed to provide essential services and tackle poverty.
