Cell phones are touching the lives of Tajikistani women in many ways. Photo: Kate B Dixon (flickr)

Technology, migrant labor, and patriarchy: three world systems that bring benefits to some have become a tragic combination for the Tajik women whose husbands are divorcing them remotely via text message, reports Radio Free Europe.

Tajikistan's struggling economy means that as many as one in seven Tajiks works abroad, often spending most of the year away. The country is also heavily dependent on the remittances that constitute half of its GDP. If migrant men decide to divorce their wives back home, some do so via cell phone by texting the word "talaaq," Arabic for "divorce." In Sunni Islam, saying the word three times is a recognized way for men to end their marriages.

Migrant Tajiks are largely beyond the reach of their country's laws. Neither text messages nor "talaaq" are legal methods of divorce there (unlike in other countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, where courts have sanctioned the combination), but courts can't enforce this or other divorce proceedings — like alimony payments — on an absent husband.

These Tajik women are often left without homes or means of support when their marriages end. Respite may only come when they are fully integrated into the legal system — to match their immersion in the technology that has already deeply touched their lives.

By the summer of 2008, the price of rice had increased five times from the average price in 2005. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

The following post is from One Table, a Mercy Corps campaign to fight world hunger by investing in the world's women.

Today almost a billion people worldwide are unable to buy or grow enough food to avoid malnutrition. That's 120 million more than were hungry in 2006.

What happened? Basically, the world saw dramatic spikes in food prices. But there were many underlying causes of what's known as the global food crisis:

• Drought and other climate-related problems that resulted in smaller harvests
• Changing diets — rise of the middle class in India and China and an increased demand for food, especially meat, which requires large amounts of grain to raise
• Diversion of crops from food production to the production of biofuels
• High fuel prices during 2008 — if it costs more to transport food, prices go up
• Declining investments in agricultural productivity — total agriculture development aid to poor countries plunged from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. At the same time, the developing world's cities have been ballooning with people who do not grow any of their food
• Export bans and restrictions last year in several major grain-producing countries like China as governments sought to lower food prices for their own citizens, with the result of reducing the global supply on hand.

While food prices have come down from their highs of 2008, they remain substantially above historic levels. Many economists feel this trend, which most severely affects those who can least afford it, is likely to continue for some time.

The economic, health and societal costs of the global food crisis have been severe. One of the first things Mercy Corps did to figure out how and where to direct our efforts was to survey the communities where we work. We discovered that within communities Mercy Corps serves, roughly 70 percent of income is spent on food, and 80 percent of the population had been affected by rising food prices over the past year. The survey also confirmed something we already suspected: that families were coping with higher prices by eating fewer meals, selling off household belongings, going into debt and removing children from school so that they can work.

In addition to being a record year for food prices, it's also been a record year for our food security team, allowing Mercy Corps to aggressively respond to this crisis. We now have 17 programs in 13 countries designed specifically to respond to this on-going problem. Through support from donors including USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gap Foundation, the Hunger Site, and private individuals, our Food Crisis Response employs a strategy designed to ensure that the groundwork for increased prosperity in the future is laid — even while addressing the immediate problem of accessing sufficient food.

Food distributions, much of which are specifically targeted to improve child nutrition, are taking place in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and again Zimbabwe, Mercy Corps is helping hungry households to access food by providing employment opportunities, agricultural training and inputs (such as seeds and tools), and helping people establish and grow small businesses.

Combined, these programs are reaching almost 1.5 million individuals who have been directly impacted by higher food prices. Overall, Mercy Corps’ Crisis Response will lead to a sustainable increase in income for these people, leading in turn to greater food security over the long-term.

A Tajik woman and child. According to the BBC, selling babies on the black market is common in Tajikistan. Photo: Lambro (flickr)

Cash for babies is becoming more common-place than you might expect in Tajikistan, according to the BBC.

In one of the poorest and most conservative nations in Central Asia, more than 64 percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day. With few economic opportunities in their homeland, Tajik men often leave for better-paying work abroad while their wives take care of their children and manage the household. Yet, it is common for these men not to return home and instead, abandon their families. Some pregnant women left behind by their spouses resort to selling their baby, as they can't afford to feed another child.

In Tajik society, a child born out of wedlock can bring shame on a family. Mothers of illegitimate children will often leave their babies in hospital maternity wards right after delivery to avoid scandal.

Perhaps the primary reason why this baby black market exists is because of the lengthy and complex process for legal adoption in Tajikistan. Childless couples wishing to avoid the arduous process are known to pay mothers and medical staff in hospitals for unwanted babies.

Although there are legal implications for trafficking of children in Tajikistan — up to 8 years in prison — women are still taking the risk of selling their babies because they simply cannot afford to keep them.

Tajik women take on the bulk of responsibility while husbands and sons have left the country for migrant work. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Tajikistan has the highest remittance rate in the world — a recent World Bank report says that around half of the Central Asian country's money comes from workers abroad. But a weakened economy in Russia, where 98 percent of Tajik remittance income originates, has drastically slowed cash flow back to Tajikistan and its seven million inhabitants.

EurasiaNet reports that between September and November of last year, remittances from migrants dropped more than 50 percent. That decrease alone accounts for a 20 percent drop in the Tajik GDP.

Nearly one million Tajik men work abroad. These workers face growing tensions as local workers fight to keep their own jobs, feeling threatened by the guest workers who poured into Russia and Kazakhstan during better economic times in those countries. The New York Times says that during the migrant boom, the portion of Tajiks living below the poverty line dropped by one-third, to around 50 percent.

At home, Tajik women are left to manage the fields and young boys are the primary wage earners. Remittances help keep Tajik families out of extreme poverty, reports EurasiaNet's Rob Cavese, but because most transactions are cash-based and few Tajiks have bank accounts, the concern is that most funds from abroad are used for immediate consumption and not for investment.

With so many in Tajikistan relying on outside wages, Cavese writes, there is little incentive for the government to initiate a restructuring of domestic wages.

“The Tajik economy is not sustainable without migration,” Dilip Ratha, a senior economist at the World Bank, told The New York Times. “It is not diversified. People are the most important resource they have.”

The snowmelt from mountainous Tajikistan has the potential to make the country an energy exporter. Photo: Jason Sangster for Mercy Corps

What do you do if you're a country that can't afford a big public infrastructure project? If you're Tajikistan, you ask your own citizens to chip in.

In Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, the mayor has asked residents to "donate" half their monthly salary this month and next to finish a Soviet-era dam that was never completed, according to EurasiaNet.

Tajikistan is Central Asia's poorest country. The guaranteed minimum monthly salary is barely above $10 — half the estimated monthly living expenses. Despite being Central Asia's poorest state, EurasiaNet reports that many residents are complying with the request out of fear of government reprisals. Rumors are that the government tracks who does and doesn't contribute.

The request follows a severe winter energy crisis that left most of the country in sub-zero temperatures without water, electricity or heat for four weeks. Eurasia Daily Monitor reports that Tajikistan is still importing most of its energy from its Central Asian neighbors, even though in most years it relies on its own energy production starting in mid-April.

In fact, Tajikistan has the water resources to actually export power to its neighbors. It's home to more than half of the region's hydropower potential, notes a blogger on neweurasia.net.

But with seemingly no one willing to invest in its neglected infrastructure — its ranking among the world's most corrupt countries poses one challenge — the government is left to try to collect loose change from the people themselves.