Social and Cultural Factors Shaping Health and Nutrition, Wellbeing and Protection of the Rohingya within a Humanitarian Context

The Rohingya are a stateless predominantly Muslim minority that has traditionally lived inArakan (aka Rakhine State), in Myanmar. Life in Myanmar has been characterised by severe restrictions on movement, livelihoods, political participation, religious life, marriage and procreation, and access to services. More than half a million Rohingya refugees, 60% of them children, have crossed the border into Bangladesh, joining refugee camps or settling informally, and are in dire need of basic services such as food, health care, and protection. To support their humanitarian intervention, UNICEF have requested this rapid evidence review: to assess the socio-normative values, beliefs and practices of the Rohingya around health, wellbeing and nutrition, and around the protection of children, adolescents and women (including gender norms) in a humanitarian context; and to assess the existence of social classes/ caste or social structures that might become invisible barriers for accessing services (e.g. child-friendly spaces)? To answer these questions, this paper first explores the broader context of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh; then it explores key religious and cultural practices that are relevant to issues of health and protection; the following section explores aspects of health in more detail such as sanitation, nutrition, maternal and mental health. Finally the report closes with a set of preliminary recommendations.UNICE

Contextual Factors Shaping Cholera Transmission and Treatment-Seeking in Somalia and the Somali region of Ethiopia

The drought in the Horn of Africa and the protracted conflict has created a humanitarian emergency that has led to a declaration of famine in several regions of Somalia and the Somali region of Ethiopia. As a result of depleted water resources, widespread internal displacement, malnutrition, and inadequate water and sanitation facilities, cholera outbreaks have occurred. This Evidence Synthesis asks two questions: a) what are the practices, behaviours, social norms and wider factors that increase the risk of cholera/AWD transmission among communities in Somalia and the Somali region of Ethiopia? and b) what beliefs and other socio-economic factors influence the decision to seek treatment for cholera/AWD (for adults, adolescents and children) from health facilities in Somalia and the Somali region of Ethiopia? To answer these questions, the author explores the determinants of risk and vulnerability to cholera in the Somali regions, and then examines behavioural factors that increase the risk of cholera transmission, followed by the contextual factors that shape treatment-seeking.UNICE

Food sovereignty and campesino moral economies: market embeddedness, autonomy and solidarity in the Matagalpa Highlands of Nicaragua

In the past two decades, social movements advocating for food sovereignty, the most visible being Via Campesina (the peasant’s way), have successfully articulated an alternative paradigm to the dominant models of industrial food production and free trade. Food sovereignty is constructed upon particular conceptions of the moral economies of peasants and assumptions about how peasants deploy moral values and economic practices to resist commoditisation. This ethnography establishes how peasants relate to the commoditisation of grain, land and labour in their everyday lives, and in turn reflects on what a food sovereignty rooted in campesino moral economies would look like. To do this, I conducted fieldwork in a village in the Matagalpa Highlands of Nicaragua, documenting campesinos’ everyday practices, moral ideologies and social norms regarding the production, transfer and exchange of food, land and labour. This research breaks down the idea that market exchanges are only profit-seeking and gift-giving is solely the product of mutuality. I argue that campesino households and communities engage partially with capitalist markets whilst pursuing autonomy from them. This is achieved through resisting commoditisation to different degrees for different commodities, with moral norms allowing certain things to fall in and out of commodity status. Moral norms allow for grain and labour to be sold as a commodity in particular circumstances whereas fully resist the sale of land. Autonomy from the market is underpinned by ideologies of solidarity, shaped by the social embeddedness of exchanges determined by relations of kinship, affiliation and locality. Whilst these ideologies succeed in stalling capitalist accumulation, they can reproduce conservative notions of the family and disguise intra-community class inequalities. I show how market exchanges are frequently used to deliver solidarity and that family networks can also be used to extract profit: exchanges have become a contested battlefield, where exploiters can portray themselves as helpers