The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center is a non-profit research-for-development organization that develops improved varieties of wheat and maize with the aim of contributing to food security, and innovates agricultural practices to help boost production, prevent crop disease and improve smallholder farmers' livelihoods. CIMMYT is one of the 15 CGIAR centers. CIMMYT is known for hosting the world's largest maize and wheat genebank at its headquarters in Mexico.
CGIAR is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR research aims to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources.
BRAC is an international development organisation based in Bangladesh. In order to receive foreign donations, BRAC was subsequently registered under the NGO Affairs Bureau of the Government of Bangladesh. BRAC is the largest non-governmental development Organisation in the world, in terms of the number of employees as of September 2016. Established by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed in 1972 after the independence of Bangladesh, BRAC is present in all 64 districts of Bangladesh as well as 16 other countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR)(Danish: Den danske komité for hjælp til afghanske flygtninge) is a non-political, non-governmental, non-profit humanitarian and development organization working to improve the lives of the Afghan people since 1984.
Human rights in Afghanistan are severely restricted, especially since Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August 2021. Women's rights and freedom are severely restricted as they are banned from most public spaces and employment. Afghanistan is the only country in the world to ban education for women over the age of eleven. Taliban's policies towards women are usually termed as gender apartheid. Minority groups such as Hazaras face persecution and eviction from their lands. Authorities have used physical violence, raids, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, enforced disappearances of activists and political opponents.
In 2022, Freedom House rated Nepal’s human rights at 57 out 100, determining the country's status in terms of fundamental freedoms as "partly free".
Evangelina Villegas was a Mexican cereal biochemist whose work with maize led to the development of quality protein maize (QPM). She and her colleague from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Surinder Vasal, shared the 2000 World Food Prize for this achievement. Villegas was the first woman to ever receive the World Food Prize.
A person's livelihood refers to their "means of securing the basic necessities of life". Livelihood is defined as a set of activities essential to everyday life that are conducted over one's life span. Such activities could include securing water, food, fodder, medicine, shelter, clothing. An individual's livelihood involves the capacity to acquire aforementioned necessities in order to satisfy the basic needs of themselves and their household. The activities are usually carried out repeatedly and in a manner that is sustainable and providing of dignity. For instance, a fisherman's livelihood depends on the availability and accessibility of fish.
Sancharak District or Sangcharak is a district of Sar-e Pol Province, Afghanistan. Its center is the city of Tukzar or Tokzar. Sancharak district borders Balkh Province in the east. Sancharak District's area is 1089 square kilometres.
The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit Organization (AREUO) is an independent research organization based in Kabul, Afghanistan. It aims to provide a firm basis for policy and practice in the country's rapidly changing environment by conducting in-depth, on-the-ground research. Funding is provided by a variety of governments and agencies.
Afghanistan's Children - A New Approach (ASCHIANA) is an Afghan nongovernmental organisation that has provided services, support and programs to working street children and their families since 1995. ASCHIANA currently serves 4,500 students in Afghanistan through centers in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat and Parwan. ASCHIANA operates four centres in Kabul: two centres for basic education, one centre for accelerated girls' education and one emergency shelter for runaway children. ASCHIANA also provides basic education for internally displaced persons and returned refugees through five outreach areas in Kabul.
Rural poverty refers to situations where people living in non-urban regions are in a state or condition of lacking the financial resources and essentials for living. It takes account of factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the marginalization and economic disadvantage found there. Rural areas, because of their small, spread-out populations, typically have less well maintained infrastructure and a harder time accessing markets, which tend to be concentrated in population centers.
Hamida Barmaki was a renowned Afghan law professor and human rights activist. She was killed together with her family in a suicide attack.
Sylvia Hamilton Chant was a British academic who was professor of Development Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science and was co-director of the MSc Urbanisation and Development Programme in the LSE's Department of Geography and Environment.
Buberuka Highlands is one of the 12 major agroecological zones in northeast Rwanda and covers an area of 600 square kilometres (230 sq mi), which is nearly one third area in the Ruhengeri Prefecture. Located near the border with Uganda, the highlands include parts of the Byumba and Ruhengeri provinces located to the south of the equator.
The Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) is the largest non-governmental organization working to alleviate poverty in North West Pakistan. It was established in 1989 with the aim of reducing poverty and ensuring sustainable means of livelihood in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. SRSP is part of the Rural Support Programmes (RSP's) initiated by United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Award winner Shoaib Sultan Khan. It is now the largest regional RSP, with extensive outreach into communities. In recent years because of its vast outreach, SRSP has had to play a prominent role in disasters that have hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. As a result, humanitarian work along with development has become a core competency of the organization.
Naila Kabeer is an Indian-born British Bangladeshi social economist, research fellow, writer and Professor at the London School of Economics. She was also president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2018 to 2019. She is on the editorial committee of journals such as Feminist Economist, Development and Change, Gender and Development, Third World Quarterly and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies. She works primarily on poverty, gender and social policy issues. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection, focused on South and South East Asia.
Dilbagh Singh Athwal was an Indian-American geneticist, plant breeder and agriculturist, known to have conducted pioneering research in plant breeding. He was a professor and the Head of the Department of Plant Breeding at Punjab Agricultural University and an associate of Norman Borlaug, a renowned biologist and Nobel Laureate, with whom he has collaborated for the introduction of high-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat.
In Afghanistan, poverty is widespread in rural and urban areas. However, it has been estimated that poverty in Afghanistan is mainly concentrated in rural areas. It has been estimated that four out of five poor people live in rural areas. In these rural areas, families without enough access to adequate nutrition see many infants and children become stunted, malnourished, and die each year. The regions in Afghanistan where almost half of the inhabitants are poor are the eastern, northeastern, and west-central regions. According to the Afghan government's estimates, 42 percent of the Afghanistan's total population lives below the poverty line. Also, 20 percent of people living just above the poverty line are highly vulnerable to falling into poverty.
Uma Lele is an agricultural economist, currently at the Institute of Economic Growth at the University of Delhi, India. She has spent much of her career working with the World Bank and other international organizations.
