Women Starve as They Eat Least and Eat Last #AfricaClimateCrisis

The cost of living, which has rapidly increased since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is being increasingly felt by people in regions that are already beset by conflict or the effects of the climate crisis before the invasion. For countries still reeling from the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine has made an already desperate situation much worse. Millions more go to bed hungry across the world each night since the war disrupted supply chains and pushed up already inflated food and energy prices, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In times of crises, when there is literally nothing to put on the table. It is women and girls who suffer the most, women and girls eat last, and they eat least. Out of the out of the 350 million that are going severely hungry in the world right now, nearly 6 out of 10 are women and girls.

"When food is scarce, girls and women eat least and they eat last and they eat least nutritious foods, and actually their nutritional needs may even take a backseat to those of boy and men. Evidence from the several contexts where we work show that married adolescent girls, for example, are particularly vulnerable to denial of food by their husbands, their in-laws or other wives, especially when they have not performed the patriarchal and the gender expected chores in the home," according to Angela Machonesa, the regional head of influencing and strategic communications for Middle East, Eastern and Southern Africa at Plan International.