Enhance Farmers' resilience through Improving food security for most vulnerable Households in area C-West Bank

Objectives

The proposed project will target 15 vulnerable rural communities in Area C in the west bank Jenin, Tulkarm, Salfit, ‎Tubas and Hebron governorates, the chosen communities suffer from high and severe occupation ‎restrictive measures and settlers’ violence that contribute to loss of livelihood stability ‎and deterioration of the socioeconomic environment. The protracted protection crisis due to the ‎prolonged occupation and other external factors like COIVD- 19 and the war on Ukraine further ‎exasperated the economic and social situation, and negatively impacted the ability of targeted ‎Palestinian households to meet their basic needs and live in dignity.‎ Within the targeted communities in Area C, Israel retains exclusive control, including over law ‎enforcement, access and movement, planning and construction. Thus, preventing people from ‎accessing their natural resources (land and water), destroying agricultural lands amp animal shelters, ‎water cisterns, uprooting planted trees, these actions force displace vulnerable families and disrupt ‎their livelihoods, and deprive them from most critical and basic humanitarian needs, which are against ‎IHRL and IHL.‎ These 15 locations suffer from settlements expansion and land confiscations in addition to continuous ‎episodes of settler’s violence. The project aims at enhancing the resilience of 1152 farmers' HH s ‎‎(capita5644) including 1609 women, 1665 men, 1157girls and 1213 boys serving 5192 dunums by ‎improving the food security of vulnerable farmers and households taking. ‎This will be achieved through land rehabilitation productivity enhancement of 1602 dunums by fencing (82 dunums), rehabilitation through stones crushing (400 dunums) ‎and pruning of olive trees (1120 dunums) to protect the lands and increase land productivity. The ‎Rehabilitation of 9 km of agricultural roads to enhance protection accessibility and utilization of the ‎served agricultural lands and decrease in production cost. These roads will also help fire trucks to reach wildfires. Increasing access to ‎water for agriculture land to enhance farmers resilience and productivity through the installation of 2 ‎km of water carries to for the benefit of 200 dunums, and the rehabilitation of 12 water cisterns for ‎the benefit of 120 dunums. In addition to 98 grace cutting ‎machines to reduce the threats farmers (especially women) face from settlers during olive harvesting ‎season by reducing harvesting time, better cleaning and minimizing fire risks. In these targeted locations, farmers need permission from Israeli ‎side to get access to their lands when harvesting. The project will also provide rehabilitation of 7 ‎ animals ‎shelters for ‎the benefit ‎of 7 ‎farmers ‎households to increase the productive assets ‎pertaining Cattle in the targeted localities. The project focuses on promoting PSEA and AAP. In each locality, awareness session will be conducted ‎and PSEA awareness material will be distributed. In these sessions the WFP-managed Inter-Agency ‎common feedback mechanism will be disseminated, along with the proper communication channels. For non ‎PSEA related feedback and complaints, PARC’s feedback mechanism will be disseminated. ‎Lastly, once the project is approved, a series of actions will take place to ensure good governance, ‎participation, ownership, information sharing and accountability PARC team will ‎announce and formulate Local Committees in the targeted location (15 LC). These LCs will have ‎representatives from Village Councils, Municipalities, CBOs and they will participate and ‎steer the project. It will ensure to maintain a voice to women, as the project’s team will encourage women to participate in the LC and decision making. Then, tendering and ‎contracting, where the project team and the local committees will ensure the best value of money, and ‎the project will be implemented based on a well formulated exit strategy.‎