“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong; it’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength”

– G.D. Anderson 

Women and Islam

In Islam, men and women are moral equals in God’s sight and are expected to fulfil the same duties of worship, prayer, faith, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. Islam by and large improved the status of ladies contrasted with before Arab societies, restricting female child murder and perceiving ladies’ full personhood. Islamic law stresses the authoritative idea of marriage, necessitating that a dowry is paid to the woman and not her family, and ensuring women’s rights of inheritance and to claim and oversee the property. Women were additionally allowed the option to live in the marital home and get monetary maintenance during marriage and a holding up period following demise and separation. 

Historical records show that Muhammad counselled ladies and gauged their opinions seriously. Umm Waraqah was selected imam over the family unit by Muhammad. Women contributed altogether to the canonization of the Quran. A lady is known to have adjusted the definitive decision of Caliph Umar on the endowment. Women prayed in mosques unsegregated from men, were involved in hadith transmission, gave sanctuary to men, engaged in commercial transactions were encouraged to seek knowledge, and were both instructors and pupils in the early Islamic period. Muhammad’s last wife, Aishah, was a well-known authority in medicine, history, and rhetoric. Caliph Umar named ladies to fill in as authorities in the market of Medina. Life stories of recognized ladies, particularly in Muhammad’s family unit, show that ladies acted moderately independently in early Islam. In Sufi circles, ladies were perceived as educators, followers, “otherworldly moms,” and even inheritors of the profound privileged insights of their fathers. 

No woman held religious titles in Islam, but many women held political power, some jointly with their husbands, others independently. The best-known women rulers in the premodern era include Khayzuran, who governed the Muslim Empire under three Abbasid caliphs in the eighth century; Malika Asma bint Shihab al-Sulayhiyya and Malika Arwa bint Ahmad al-Sulayhiyya, who both held power in Yemen in the eleventh century; Sitt al-Mulk, a Fatimid queen of Egypt in the eleventh century; the Berber queen Zaynab al-Nafzawiyah (r. 1061 – 1107 ); two thirteenth-century Mamluk queens, Shajar al-Durr in Cairo and Radiyyah in Delhi; six Mongol queens, including Kutlugh Khatun (thirteenth century) and her daughter Padishah Khatun of the Kutlugh-Khanid dynasty; the fifteenth-century Andalusian queen Aishah al-Hurra, known by the Spaniards as Sultana Madre de Boabdil; Sayyida al-Hurra, governor of Tetouán in Morocco (r. 1510 – 1542 ); and four seventeenth-century Indonesian queens.

Nevertheless, the status of women in premodern Islam all in all adjusted not to Quranic beliefs however to prevailing patriarchal cultural norms. Thus, improvement of the status of ladies turned into a significant issue in the present day, reformist Islam.

The rights to education and employment plus women’s activism make a big difference in women’s rights.

In “Myths About Women’s Rights: How, Where and Why Rights Advance,” Feryal Cherif, analyses two hypotheses for why cultures advance gender equality. 

The first is the thing that we call “centre rights”: that women’s rights to education and employment are the structure hinders with which to begin political organizing for equality, developing a group sense of fairness (or the lack thereof), and building public support for women’s equal socioeconomic standing. This gives government officials, and other residential elites motivations to help ladies’ privileges. 

The subsequent hypothesis is that ladies’ privileges backing cultivates change as local and worldwide activists advance new standards of uniformity by publicizing countries’ practices — both those that treat ladies similarly and those that slack — and constraining governments to adjust to worldwide norms. Research shows that these hypotheses are steady with the ongoing advances in gender equality in Saudi Arabia and the region at large. Looking at ladies’ property rights in 41 Muslim-larger part nations, I believe that women are probably going to appreciate safer property rights in nations where, first, women have more prominent admittance to education and second, where there are thick systems of women rights activists. Where ladies are more mindful of their privileges, better situated to challenge male family, and have the socioeconomic power to hold politicians accountable, their property rights are stronger. That is valid also for the Saudi Arabian development of women’s rights, including the right to drive. It is presumably not a happenstance that, throughout the long term, the hole between Saudi Arabian boys’ and girls’ education has considerably limited. Furthermore, it’s actually in numerous other Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) nations, where young ladies beat young men in school and enrol in universities at higher rates than boys. Besides, an expanding number of Arab ladies have joined the work power — though not yet at levels as high as worldwide midpoints. Indeed, even in Saudi Arabia, with its extraordinary forms of gender segregation, ladies are working in an ever-increasing number of fields. Also, with the right to drive, more women will be able to seek employment. 

In addition to core rights, women rights activism has additionally considerably expanded in the Middle East and North Africa in the previous decades. During 1980 and 2015, the number of women rights groups operating in the region nearly tripled. Some scholars and reporters have argued that advocacy campaigns and global pressure have helped push MENA nations toward gender equality. 

Indeed, even in conservative states like Saudi Arabia, the government may think that it’s hard to contain women’s expectations once they’ve been educated and entered the work power — even while more traditionalist pieces of their country push back.

Political Participation

Political revolutions and instability in the Middle East have mobilized women in new ways. Despite political turmoil and express dangers to their privileges, numerous ladies are expanding their activism to make their voices heard. Because of this flood of political commitment from ladies, however, fundamentalist and traditionalist pioneers and governments are pushing back, increasing their assaults on women’s human rights with an end goal to keep up their power. 

Even though, when women do win rights, they aren’t able to execute them since they are sabotaged by solid accepted practices and conventions. For instance, although women in Egypt have cast ballot rights, the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement (which conducts customary political race checking) has discovered that in provincial towns, spouses, fathers, or siblings will advise women how to cast a ballot—or even just take a women’s polling form from her and round it out however they see fit. 

Laws in the area, including both old laws and ongoing ones, confine ladies’ common freedoms and fill in as unequivocal proof that people with significant influence don’t consider women equals. For instance, in 2014 the Iraqi parliament introduced a draft law that endeavoured to make it lawful to wed a young girl as young as nine years of age, granting conjugal assault, and allowing polygamy. A long-standing law in Lebanon doesn’t permit women to pass on their citizenship, implying that if a Lebanese lady weds a non-Lebanese man, her children wouldn’t have Lebanese citizenship. Also, fundamentalist gatherings are a ground-breaking and developing danger, with systems that straightforwardly target women, including the abduction and forced sexual slavery of Yazidi ladies in Iraq by the alleged Islamic State gathering (ISIS). With so many powerful forces opposing women’s human rights in the Middle East, many in the region feel that international support has been far too weak. Leaders of women’s groups across the region stress the need for international support and solidarity. Past budgetary help, women likewise call for worldwide solidarity and expressions of help, referring to the two sorts of help as basic to opposing fundamentalism. Women’s gatherings keep up that while fundamentalist dangers against women’s rights are at the moment most powerful in the Middle East, the issue is, in fact, a global problem. 

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War-torn Palestine

It is important in this regard to trace the genesis of the Israel- Palestine conflict and how it has had repercussions in the geopolitics of the changing contours of the Arab- Israel conflict. The terminology of Palestine was endowed by the Roman Empire, Hadrian in 135 CE after the defeat in the Battle of Bar Khhoba Revolt as he desired to erase Judea as it implied a long drawn connection with the Jews. Jews have continued to be victims of persecution, the emergence of which began at the dawn of Crusades. However, the Arabs had been under the authority of the Byzantine, Romans and later on the Ottoman Empire, the majority of Palestine was composed of its Muslim majority (Tessler, 1994, p: 42-44).

It was under Hitler’s autocratic rule during the Holocaust that complete annihilation of Jews was witnessed, whereby they were targeted to be the enemy of the Germans (Arendt, 1963, p: 36- 56). Yet, it cannot be denied that Jews have always felt that Palestine has been their homeland which the Arabs have laid a claim over, which Israeli historiography has espoused (Tessler, 1994, p: 74-128). The establishment of a State for the Jews would bring an end to years of persecution. Rather, the Zionist movement experienced an evolution as there was a demand to cleanse this holy land from Arabs or ‘Eretz Israel’ as known in Hebrew. It was in 1917 that Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, endorsed the idea of a Jewish State that soon turned into a violent response by the Palestinians, a colony under the British sphere of influence ceded by Ottoman Turkey after World War I. By 1937, the British Peel Commission agreed to partition Palestine which accentuated into the Arab-Israeli War (Pappe, 2007, p: 10- 17). In 1948, the United Nations played a pivotal role that altered the history of Palestine underlined by Resolution 181 of 29 September 1947 and the official recognition of the Jewish State by the U.S.A and the USSR.

Violation of Human Rights in Palestine

Leaflets were distributed in villages to warn of the disastrous consequences of collaborating with the Arab Liberation Army. The village of Deir Yassin was occupied by the Jewish military forces where the inhabitants were killed by gun spray (Pappe, 2007, p: 40-70). The IEZL or Irgun Zvai Leumi under the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin was known to have headed these forces and perpetrated the massacre of Palestinian Arabs. One of the testimonies published by the NGO Zochort that works towards Transitional Justice of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict states that he along with other men were ordered to evacuate the villages where Palestinian Arabs resided as deportation would be taking place. The massacre has been bestowed with the horrifying nomenclature of Nakba or catastrophe to designate the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948. Possession of Palestinian property violates the International Law (Human Rights Council, 2017). Women were victims of rape, firstly because of their sex and secondly because of their Palestinian-Arab identity. Women have been epitomized as embedding honour of the family. By the Israeli Citizenship Law, the Palestinians citizens were construed as Israeli citizens as passed on 1st April 1952. The same trajectory has been drawn in the History of India as the Partition of 1947 must be perceived from the lens of a watershed that gave birth to two nation-states, India and Pakistan, the latter which has been believed to be a product of a failed democracy as post-colonial historians would argue. The commonality in the history of India and Palestine is that both countries experienced the discourse of Partition violence. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was targeted against the Palestine Liberation Army and Syria as the surface to air missiles were deployed by the latter in Lebanon, whereas the PLO employed Israel with artillery shells (Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 2012, Volume: 3). President Roland Regan introduced the Regan Plan and affirmed USA’s decision of not supporting Israel’s dominance over the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The United Nation Resolution 242 was implemented by the Regan Plan which stated that a solution must be reached of the existing refugee crisis as well as the Security Council to position a Special Representative in the Middle East. The aim of the Oslo Accords was to elect a Palestine Interim Government as well as a Council to govern the Palestinian people with authority been transferred from the Israeli Military Government. Therefore, Abraham Accords has been perceived in terms of a harbinger of peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict (United Nations Security Council:1993). The Oslo Accords signed in 1995 signed between the Palestine Liberation Army and the State of Israel had failed as Israel’s decision was to annex West Bank.

Perception of Turkey and Bahrain on UAE-Israel Deal

On the other hand, it is significant to evaluate the response of Turkey and Bahrain on the perception of Abraham Accords. Prince Recep Tayyip Erodgan, the President of Turkey stated that the normalization of ties between UAE and IS was rather the latter’s betrayal of trust and undermining the cause for Palestine. The Arab Peace Plan of 2002 was established by the Crown Prince, Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the Beirut Summit which underlined the recognition of the State of Israel as and stated that she must withdraw from the Golan Heights as well as the creation of Lebanon since 1967. The plan clearly espoused the creation of a sovereign independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as the capital as highlighted in the Council of the Arab States at the Summit Level which has been forgone as Erodgan argued. The Kingdom of Bahrain has equally welcomed Abraham Accords and perceived this as the path that would pave peace building.

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Food Insecurity Before the Pandemic

 The Middle East and surrounding regions have always suffered from food insecurity when compared to the rest of the world. According to a report by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, “The number of chronically undernourished in the region has doubled from 16.5 million people in 1990–1992 to 33 million people in 2014–2016.”

War and a generally unfavourable climate have persisted for producing and distributing food in the region. This led to a dependence on imports for food, which was a worrying trend. There is a huge deficit between the import and export of food in the region. Even when food was available, it did not lead to a transition of nourished populations. 1 in 5 people in the Middle East and the areas around it have been undernourished. The number of poor in the region is high, and according to the FAO, the poor typically have to spend between 35 and 65 per cent of their income on food. In such a backdrop, food insecurity was likely to worsen with the pandemic.

Food Insecurity in Light of Covid-19

There are several ways the pandemic has worsened food insecurity – several people have lost their livelihoods. Lessening in purchasing power has led to tighter budgets and food becomes difficult to afford. Plus, the quality of food that can be afforded also decreases. People shift to packaged, processed foods and away from fresher foods, leading to a significantly less nutritious diet. But the price of food has definitely risen in the pandemic – In Syria alone, a 200 per cent price hike for basic food has been noted in under a year – a level not seen before in the country’s nine-years of civil war.

This is especially worrying considering that the pandemic has also weakened the already feeble food supply chains. Consider the aforementioned dependence on imported food – restrictions on movement and enforced social distancing is a unique characteristic of the pandemic, which is going to affect trade like never before. The world merchandise trade can drop between 13 and 32% in 2020 due to the pandemic – such occurrences will affect the availability of food. Even domestically, food transportation requires movement which is being restricted as much as possible. 

Apart from these obvious ways, there are a host of related problems that the pandemic has brought. Recently, locust outbreaks have affected food crop production. Closing down of borders and restrictions on movement will hinder locust control operations, further deteriorating crop production. In lots of areas, nutrition is provided to children when they go to school. However, with the coronavirus pandemic shutting down schools, another way to access food has become unavailable. From war-torn countries, refugees and asylum seekers cross the borders to get better lives and basic amenities. These displaced people will have to remain in situations with no access to basic amenities such as food and clean water as the pandemic forces borders shut. 

Moreover, the region already has a host of diseases. For example, for the last few years, Yemen has also been dealing with an endemic of cholera – between October 2016 and November 2019, over 2.2 million cases of cholera had been reported in the country. With the coronavirus likely to put pressure on the already weak healthcare infrastructure of these regions, these endemics can also worsen. All in all, both pandemic and endemic are slated to disrupt people’s livelihoods and safe access to food.

Conclusion

The region, already having unfavourable factors such as war, locust outbreaks, other endemics and unstable regimes has always suffered from food insecurity. The further unemployment, restrictions on the movement of goods both globally and domestically and rising food prices caused by the pandemic have all led to an even tenser situation. Food insecurity is not just a problem, it is also a cause of different problems. Food insecurity in this pandemic is made dangerous by the perception that “foreigners” bring in the virus. This attitude can lead to discrimination and further shunning of refugees. Limited food supplies in refugee camps can cause strife between local communities and refugees.

The people in this region are already at risk – due to poor healthcare facilities and less nutritious diets, they are likely to have underlying health conditions and suffer from malnutrition. This makes for weaker immunity systems. The region has been engulfed in a vicious cycle – of food insecurity leading to weaker immunity systems, followed by higher cases and more diseases. This, in turn, leads to disruption of food supply chains and hence, food insecurity. The heartbreaking reality is that even if these countries can somehow manage to save their citizens from coronavirus – they might just die from hunger anyway.

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Swarming

The swarms are enormous masses of tens of billions of flying bugs. Locust swarms can travel up to 81 miles and more each day, with 40 billion to 80 billion locusts packed in half a square mile. A swarm of locust in the year 1988, flew from West Africa to the Caribbean, covering a distance of 3100 miles in just ten days. One of the locust’s species- the desert locust, is found in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, they inhabit an area of about six million square miles or thirty countries. Desert locusts possess a threat to the economic livelihood of a tenth of humans. Locusts are migratory, transboundary pests. They ride the winds, crisscrossing swaths of land until they find something they want to munch on. They especially love cereal grain crops, planted extensively across Africa. 

How Do Locusts Affect Food Security?

“The locusts are in your field for a morning, and by midday, there’s hardly anything left in your field, it’s just eaten.” Locusts are voracious eaters. Each locust can eat its own weight in plants, so a locust’s swarm comprising of 40 to 80 million locusts can consume about 423 million pounds of plants every day. The largest locusts outbreak occurred in 2003 and lasted till 2005, and damaged crops worth $2.5 billion. Studies showed that the effect of this outbreak was largely felt by the subsistence farmers. This in return affects the education of the children who grew up in that period since it was difficult to go to schools, and girls were disproportionately affected. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), locust invasion is an unusual threat to food security and livelihood in parts of East and West Africa, South West Asia, and India. Africa is very vulnerable since they had consecutive years of droughts, heavy rains, and floods. The potential hunger threat to Africa is tremendous since it is a region where 42 million were already slated to face acute food insecurity.

The map points towards the Global Forecast for desert locust (May- July). The map shows the threat to agricultural production in East Africa, the Indo-Pak border, Sudan, and the Sahel in West Africa. The danger is likely to increase due to rainfall and spring in East Africa. The swarms have begun migrating from Baluchistan and can be seen in Rajasthan, India. The locust attack can be termed as a “two-front war” since it is a challenge for India and the African continent to ensure food security as well as fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Food security in the Afro- Asian region is at risk since the locust is breeding in East Africa, Yemen, and Southern Iran.  

According to the 2020 Global Report on Food Crisis, there are 135 million severely food insecure people spread across fifty-five countries and territories. Most of these people are in the Middle East and Asia, Lake Chad Basin, Central Sahel, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, and Central America. A study by the World Food Programme shows that 130 million more are thrust towards hunger due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This gives a total of 265 million food-insecure people who would need food and nutrition as they lack any means to survive the health and economic consequences of the crisis. The monsoon season in East Africa and India would create a perfect environment for locusts to breed. Food shortage already prevailing in these regions, further these locusts attack would lead to increased food security. 

In India already 1.7 hectares of agricultural land in Rajasthan and Gujrat has been destroyed by locust attack. The presence of locusts is also detected in Punjab and Haryana. Experts suggest that locust mainly breeds in rainwater and areas affected by the cyclone. The rising temperature and changes in the climate would worsen the situation in the upcoming month. The Agricultural Ministry is investing in spraying equipment and drones to prevent the attacks. Since they can have catastrophic on Rabi crops in Rajasthan and Gujrat. Scientists warn that the locusts could push agrarian parts of India to the brink of disaster, severely disrupting food supplies and slashing earnings for millions of struggling farmers. 

How is the World Fighting Locust Attack?

Countries are taking various steps to the invasion under control, but with the outbreak of the coronavirus, it has become more difficult to fight the locust attack. In this difficult time, it is important to adapt to integrated environmentally safer measures. These may include:

1. Preventive Measures: Early detection infrastructure can be used for tracking, thus helping in keeping an eye on the spread of locusts. 
2. Post-outbreak Control Measures: Using environmentally friendly biopesticides, since it will not harm the environment and ecosystem.
3. Integrated Approach: Countries shall form effective policies and enhance social security programs, including compensation for farmers, producers, and local community residents.

The primary effect is taken by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, which runs the Desert Locust Watch to track locust migration patterns. A US $ 500 million program approved by the World Bank to support countries like Africa and the Middle East affected by the locust attack. The main aim of the program is to help the affected households, cover up their immediate food needs and protect their physical and human capital assets while building up national surveillance and early warning systems to diminish future outbreaks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has teamed up with the United Nations to remodel technology earlier used for tracking smoke plumes from fires to foresee a locust attack.

Conclusion

The combined crisis of Covid-19 and Locust is a major challenge and may lead to more disasters such as drought, disease, and increased poverty. The loss of agricultural productivity, the discontinuity of supply chains, the lack of labour, and the disruption of wholesale and transport markets due to the lockdown have had a catastrophic effect on the economy. The closing of borders as part of the quarantine measures has imposed restrictions on the movement of probable aid to tackle the locust problem.

This calls for an integrated strategy with increased monitoring, surveillance, and expenditure in a preparedness program to make vulnerable nations more immune to locust attacks. Social security, such as insurance, must be given to farmers and consumers through effective governance.

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