Single woman with 5 children, 4 daughters and one son who has mental illness. Husband died from a bomb blast 16 years ago and she has been raising her family on her own ever since. She had 3 cows - one died from lumpy skin disease, another was sold as she didn’t have enough money to live, leaving one cow producing about 27L of milk a week, which brings in around 8USD for the week.

CONTEXT:
Visited the Khatiz Dairy union this afternoon and got an understanding of the impacts the current regime has had on other facets of life than the obvious ones surrounding women’s rights.

Started by RMLSP (Rural Microfinance and livestock support program)
Implementation by FAO

Now self sustainable but running into problems with current government and lack of demand and contracts. During the times of the republic government, the union used to have contracts with military, airports, universities, provincial government,and ministries, NGOs etc. Now those contracts have ceased as they no longer stand with the de facto government. Khatiz only supply to supermarkets and those contracts are small. Even then, supermarket demands have decreased due to lack a of demand from consumers which is a flow on impact from a dwindling economy and reduced employment.

Khatiz has now run into problems with constant electricity as neighbouring country has cut power supply to Afghanistan. The Dariy Union is now operating off their own generator which is costly and non sustainable.

They had 1510 members registered, 113 of whom are female members

Families are now selling their cows to send their youth overseas but most fail and return, and as such has no cows and also lose their only income generator.

Cows have also been sustainable to lumpy skin disease when there was an outbreak in November 2022, killing many cows. To assist with that loss, Khatiz Dairy Union is supporting and motivating the farmers by providing cow feed. This is to incentivise farmers to bring their milk here and not