COVID-19 lockdown threatens displaced farmers’ livelihoods

DUHOK, Kurdistan Region – Since his family was displaced from Shingal during the Islamic State (ISIS) conflict, Hasso Suleiman has supplemented his income by farming a strip of land outside Duhok’s Khanke IDP camp.

However, since the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) imposed movement restrictions to halt the spread of coronavirus in March, Suleiman and 3,000 other families have been confined to the camp, leaving their crops untended. 

“If a solution is not found, we will all be at risk in terms of our money, seeds, and our efforts,” Suleiman told Rudaw, sitting with his family in their basic brick shelter.

Suleiman farmed his own plot of land in Shingal for 15 years before the area was seized by ISIS in 2014. Fleeing with what they could carry, the family relocated to Khanke, where they now rent five dunams (5,000 square meters) of land outside the camp.

Although Shingal was liberated in 2015, many displaced families have refused to go back, citing poor security, a lack of jobs, and lackluster reconstruction.

Job opportunities in the Kurdistan Region have helped many IDPs and refugees get back on their feet and begin planning for the future. 

The COVID-19 pandemic changed all that.

In March, the KRG blocked all non-commercial travel between provinces, followed by a strict curfew inside the region’s towns and cities.

Often overcrowded, and with basic sanitation services, the camps were seen as especially vulnerable to an outbreak of COVID-19. The KRG quickly ordered their closure, confining residents to their shelters. 

This time last year, Suleiman was tilling the soil, enriched by the winter rains, and planting seeds for the autumn harvest. This year, his fields will lie fallow. 

“Either the mayor or the governor should solve this problem for us,” Suleiman said. “We’re in Duhok province so they need to solve our problems here.”

Crops planted before the lockdown are now at risk of rotting in the ground, squandering the hard work and investment of smallholders. 

“We have started germinating seeds indoors. We now need to go to our land,” Heji Ahmed, another farmer living in the Khanke camp, told Rudaw, sitting outside his white canvass tent.

“We have only one week left to plant them. If farmers don’t start, all their plants will be at risk.” 

Shamo Ali, another farmer, criticized the lockdown measures, arguing they do nothing to promote social distancing inside the crowded camp. 

“It’s better for us to go onto the land these days so we won’t be at risk,” Ali said. “It’s better if we get out so it won’t be as crowded in the camp.”

Kurdish authorities tackling the COVID-19 outbreak say farmers can seek special permission to tend their crops from Duhok’s mayor and the provincial director of agriculture.

“A mechanism has been set in Duhok,” Farhad Mohammed, a representative from Duhok’s agriculture department, told Rudaw. 

“The agriculture department director of the district, together with the farmer, must visit the mayorship to prove that the farmer is genuine and has grown plants. The decision will be made there,” he added.

The lives and livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable communities are endangered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned this week. 

“The vast majority live in rural areas, and depend on agricultural production, seasonal jobs in agriculture, fishing, or pastoralism,” Dominique Burgeon, Director of FAO’s Emergency and Resilience Division, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“If they become ill or constrained by restrictions on movement or activity, they will be prevented from working their land, caring for their animals, going fishing, or accessing markets to sell produce, buy food, or get seeds and supplies,” he said.

Longer term, the disruption caused will set communities back years – particularly those already emerging from conflict and scarcity. 

“These people have very little to fall back on, materially speaking,” Burgeon said. 

“They could find themselves forced to abandon their livelihoods. By that I mean they might have to sell off their animals or their fishing boat for cash. Or eat all of their seeds instead of saving some to replant. 

“Once a rural farming family does that, getting to be self-reliant again becomes extremely difficult. Some might even have no other choice than to leave their farms in search of assistance,” he added. 

The UN agency has urged donors and governments to consider measures to preserve food security in developing nations and to assist rural communities in need.

With reporting from Duhok by Ayub Nsari, translation by Sarkawt Mohammed