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Malawi

Republic of Malawi: 2016/2017 Food Insecurity Response Plan

Attachments

PERIOD

July 2016 – March 2017

6.5 million People in need of humanitarian aid

6.5 million People targeted for humanitarian aid in this plan

2.4 million Farmers completely lost their production

975,000 children and Women in need of nutrition assistance

24 districts affected and in need of assistance

REQUIREMENTS

(US$) 395.13 million.

Confirmed pledges– US $ 91.32 million

Resource Gap – US $ 303.81 million

Summary

For the period from July 2016 to March 2017, Malawi faces a hazard-related food security and nutrition emergency coming on top of the devastating floods in 2015. Responding to the situation, the President of Malawi declared a State of National Disaster on 12 April 2016 and appealed for humanitarian relief assistance from the international community and the private sector.

This Food Insecurity Response Plan (FIRP), developed by the Government of Malawi in collaboration with the UN and NGOs through the humanitarian clusters, identifies food security, nutrition, agriculture, health, education and water and sanitation (WASH) as the key priorities for immediate assistance. As of now, the ongoing dry spell related to the El Nino phenomenon is affecting about 1.8 million people in need of agricultural inputs to restore their livelihoods. An estimated 500,000 people have no access to safe drinking water. About 31 per cent of the cultivated land was affected by the drought, of which 13 per cent was severely affected. Nutrition and increased mortality rates are of particular concern in 24 out of a total of 281 districts. About 975,000 children aged 6-23 months, pregnant and lactating women are particularly at risk of food insecurity and malnutrition and nutritional treatment and a total of 6.5 million people including vulnerable groups such as people living with HIV are in urgent need of humanitarian food assistance until the next harvest in March 2017.

Rationale

The plan will address the needs of the affected communities and meet gaps in food security, agriculture, WASH, health, education and nutrition. The plan outlines a mechanism for coordination and regular monitoring to ensure the needs of affected people are adequately addressed and possible critical gaps or hotspots are acted upon in a timely manner. While providing relief from food insecurity, the response will closely link and coordinate with resilience building efforts to ensure that the cycle of food and nutrition insecurity is broken in the long run.

Strategic objectives:

 Provision of immediate life-saving and life-sustaining assistance to drought-affected people through the provision of essential foods, commodities and health focused interventions;

 Ensure the mainstreaming of cross cutting issues (protection, gender and HIV and AIDS) through inter cluster coordination and monitoring of the overall response;  Support the restoration of livelihoods of drought-affected people through linkage with on going resilience-building activities.

Priority activities:

 Reducing the number of people in food insecurity;

 Reducing acute malnutrition;

 Preventing excess mortality and morbidity associated with acute malnutrition and poor feeding practices amongst children under five;

 Improving affected farmers’ access to agriculture inputs;  Increasing the percentage of affected people with access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services;

 Strengthening surveillance and prevention of disease outbreak;  Improving coordination, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.