Interview with Hélène Gnionsahe, President of the Board of Directors of the SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) civil society Alliance in Côte d’Ivoire.
1. How are women and girls more vulnerable to malnutrition in your country?
Women’s vulnerability to various forms of malnutrition is due to environmental, social and cultural factors, reinforced by a lack of information on good nutritional practices.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the climate crisis is reinforcing certain practices that are harmful to the health of women and girls in communities, particularly in the north. Women and girls are mainly responsible for collecting water and firewood. They have to travel long distances in search of these scarce resources, in order to maintain their households. In addition, traditional cooking systems are based on wood, which not only puts pressure on forest resources, but also exposes these women and girls to unhealthy smoke, further aggravating their health vulnerability.
Added to this is the depletion of arable land for food crops, making food products unavailable and difficult to access. This, combined with inappropriate dietary practices, leads to hunger and malnutrition. To cope with these existential struggles, some families are led to marry off their young daughters to have one less mouth to feed, to obtain in exchange the “bride price” (the dowry), or because they are convinced that this will improve their child’s life. These forced marriages are damaging the health of these young girls, who are future mothers.
It should also be noted that nutritional practices are strongly influenced by habits and customs. For example, when it comes to sharing meals, women and children make do with not much, while men take the privilege of the lion’s share. This is so that the woman retains the pleasure and emotional capital that the man gives her in the household. It should also be noted that when it comes to the family diet, women are constrained by customs and traditions from consuming certain foods, despite their high nutritional potential. Generally speaking, in both rural and urban areas, meals are not balanced and diets are not appropriate for good health, due to a lack of information and nutritional education.
2. What are you doing to improve the nutritional situation and empower women in the projects you run?
Alliance SUN Côte d’Ivoire has developed a strategy that promotes gender in its projects in order to improve the nutritional status of all populations in Côte d’Ivoire. This strategy consists of implementing transformational actions in support of women. These include, for instance, nutritional education and awareness-raising activities on good nutritional and health practices (over 2,275 women sensitized and trained); awareness-raising on women’s rights and gender-based violence to refocus women’s place in the household and the community (communities in over 91 localities across the country); setting up village tontines for women*, enabling them to fight hunger and malnutrition themselves, and to carry out income-generating activities (in 46 localities across the country).
*A tontine is a collective savings association that brings together savers to invest in common projects.
3. Many of the issues surrounding malnutrition in women and girls are linked to questions of social norms and cultural practices. How can we promote women’s health and well-being while respecting cultures and beliefs?
It would be difficult to take action to improve women’s health without undermining, in some ways, habits and customs. However, it is possible to initiate transformational actions with an appropriate approach that does not create a sharp break with certain aspects of the social code, in order to avoid resistance in the communities. Adopting such a strategy could further sharpen communities’ interest in nutrition.
4. What kind of support do you think the international community could provide to help turn things around? What are your expectations for the N4G Summit to be held in Paris in March 2025, and of the various stakeholders (countries, donors, international organizations) who will attend?
To make an effective contribution to change, the international community will need to focus on technical and financial support for national CSOs, to make them more operational in the field and also more professional.
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