“Daesh killed my dreams and my family's plan - ‘FAO-EU’ revived them!”
On International Women's Day, we must take the opportunity to bring awareness to the profound contributions rural women make to society, as well as the ways in which they are underrepresented and hindered.
‘’Everyone in Iraq loves Al-Qimar, Iraq’s signature soft cheese cream and other local traditional dairy products, like butter, ghee (dohn Horr), laban, guishwa and varieties of white cheeses.
Yet few realize that the dairy farmers who produce the milk and such products are mainly rural women, considered the most vulnerable segment in Iraqi society and who received little attention in the past. In addition, female dairy producers in Nineveh Governorate in Iraq still suffer from the physical and moral impacts of conflict.
Within the framework of post-crisis development efforts for rebuilding agricultural livelihoods, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is empowering rural women and reviving hope to returnees in Iraq through an EU-funded project with targeted interventions to improve value chains and revitalize Iraq’s high-value crop/livestock systems and agri-food based micro-industries.
Women dairy producers in the Governorate of Nineveh, the “breadbasket” of Iraq, struggle to recover from the conflict. “They gave us hours to leave," said Dhuhaa Najm Shith, one of the many women dairy producers forced to leave their homes, farms and dreams due to the conflict caused by ISIL in Iraq between 2014 and 2017.