La persistencia de prácticas tradicionales en la enseñanza: la primacía de las teorías implícitas sobre las

There is more than ample food available in Ecuador for the population, based on domestic production plus imports minus exports of food, but many people are too poor to buy sufficient food to meet their needs. This is especially true in rural areas where poverty is so high. Food security in rural areas is primarily determined by the ownership of adequate (quantity and quality of) land, the distribution of which we have noted is highly inegalitarian in Ecuador, with many rural families having little or no land. In urban areas, food security depends on having sufficient income to purchase the needed food, whether income from work, business, savings, or remittances. Work income in turn depends to a large degree on a person’s occupation and sector of employment, which in turn are partly a function of education.

According to the World Bank and the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, the numbers of poor and food insecure vary with the criteria used, but nevertheless remain considerable in the developing world, with global estimates of 800 million to 1 billion. Many households in Ecuador and elsewhere are exposed to seasonal fluctuations in food availability (especially in rural areas), occurrences of ill health, accidents or robberies and interruptions in income from informal sector activities or losing a formal-sector job, any of which can seriously increase their vulnerability to transient poverty. This can in turn have dramatic effects on pushing them permanently below the poverty line. Since many households have no recourse to sufficient assistance from external sources, they have to sell off what assets they have, such as their cow or pigs, their small plot of land, or their modest business capital. At minimum, households in such temporary crisis situations need supplementary food assistance to maintain an adequate level of nutrition.

The survey in Ecuador does not have any direct data measuring the nutritional status of the Colombian immigrant population, not even of children, as, for example, was collected in ENDEMAIN in 2004. Thus resources were not sufficient to collect the weight, height and or upper arm skin-fold to assess nutritional status. As a consequence, the most relevant data obtained in the survey are on food consumption. Table 4.6 and table 4.7 provide the available data, which can be used to infer the extent of hunger of the population of refugees/asylum seekers and other Colombian migrants in Ecuador. Table 4.6 shows some slightly greater vulnerability of refugee households compared to

42 Chapter 4

Table 4.6. Meals consumed per day by refugee/asylum seeker, mixed and other households Refugees/asylum

seekers Mixed Other Total Number of meals

% col. % col. % col. % col. Cases

One 8.1 4.0 6.2 6.2 12

Two 26.0 26.3 23.2 24.5 154

Three or more 65.9 69.7 70.7 69.3 333

Table 4.7. Ability of the household to obtain sufficient food for household members: refugee/asylum seeker, mixed and other households

Refugees/asylum

seekers Mixed Other Total Sufficiency

% col. % col. % col. % col. Cases

Normally sufficient 19.5 23.2 36.8 29.8 176

Sometimes insufficient 40.7 39.4 40.4 40.3 88

Many times insufficient 28.5 28.3 15.2 21.0 78

Never sufficient 11.4 9.1 7.6 8.8 157

Total 123 99 277 499 499

non-refugee households, with the percentages of the former having only one or at most two meals per day in the day before the interview being 8 and 34, respectively, in contrast to 6 and 29 for non-refugees. Asking about the number of meals consumed “yesterday” apparently reflects normal conditions adequately, since the results were similar when respondents were asked about the usual number of meals consumed per day.

Table 4.7 on the perceived adequacy of food availability reveals much greater differences between refugee/asylum seeker, mixed and other Colombian households. The data indicate that only in about one of five refugee or mixed households is there usually enough food available for its members, in contrast to 37% for other households — the latter being twice the figure of refugee households. Similarly, among both refugee and mixed households 2 in 5 often or always do not have enough food, compared to half that in non-refugee households. These are powerful differences, indicating serious food security problems of refugees/asylum seeker and mixed households, in contravention to the MDG goal 1.

To summarize this key chapter pertaining to the overriding Millennium Development Goal 1 relating to reducing poverty and hunger, first, 44% of all survey households of Colombian migrants report living on less than one US dollar per person per day and 69% on less than $2 per day. The percentages are higher for refugees/asylum seeker and mixed households, with exactly half of all refugee households living in extreme poverty and three-quarters in poverty. Subjective poverty data are similar, with 80% of refugees describing their economic situation as less than adequate; and half of both refugee/asylum seeker and mixed households perceive themselves as poorer than their neighbours, while only 8% see themselves as better off. Thus subjective poverty, which can be the most painful, is also high for many of those households and higher than for non-refugee households. Finally, data on the perceived adequacy of food supplies in the household indicate considerably more hunger in refugee households. Nevertheless, despite all their problems, it is striking that far more heads of refugee, mixed, and other households expect their economic situation to improve than worsen in the future.