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UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission: Malian Refugees in Mauritania, September 2015

Attachments

I: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) 2015 for Malian refugees in Mauritania was carried out from 31 August to 7 September 2015 in Mberra refugee camp and four key host communities with the participation of nine key partners. The objective of the Mission was to: a) assess the current food security and nutrition situation; b) evaluate the refugees’ capacity for self-reliance c) appraise the impact and appropriateness of assistance programmes; and d) develop a strategy and a Joint Plan of Action for 2016-2017. The Mission relied on secondary data for quantitative information, while the field visits focused on collecting qualitative information from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. The Mission also assessed basic social service provision, protection, security and the environment, as they directly and indirectly affect food security and malnutrition.

Mauritania currently hosts 50,102 refugees in Mberra camp while thousands of others reside in host communities and urban centres around the country. The majority of registered refugees are women and children of Arab and Touareg ethnicity and originate from the Timbuktu region of Mali and are mainly of pastoralist and nomadic backgrounds. Due to continued insecurity in northern Mali they do not envisage their return in the short or medium term; nor do they envisage their local integration in the long term.

A well-coordinated and comprehensive protection and assistance programme has been put in place to support Malian refugees. The concerted efforts of actors involved in nutrition, food assistance and public health programmes have contributed to the reduction of global acute malnutrition rates from 20 to 9.9 percent and of severe acute malnutrition rates from 5.9 to 0.8 percent between 2012 and 2014.
However, irregular and incomplete food distributions in 2015 provided refugees with an average of 1,340 kcal per day or 63 percent of their 2,000 kcal food ration entitlements. This greatly impacted the food security of the majority of refugee households who rely on food assistance as their main source of food and/or income. This led to slight increase in admissions in moderate acute malnutrition centres compared to 2014.

Many refugees also adopted negative coping mechanisms to cover their basic food needs, in particular by incurring debts and selling some of their assets which have compounded overtime; leading to increased tensions within and between households and communities. Increased food insecurity also exposed more people, in particular women and youth to protection risks and concerns, while adult males and youth are increasingly leaving the camp to seek employment elsewhere. Children from the poorest households are increasingly being withdrawn from school to support their parents in generating income.

Malian refugees in Mauritania enjoy freedom of movement and have access to natural resources such as land, pasture and water and also have the opportunity to work and trade. However, they are hosted in the most vulnerable region of the country where 44 percent of households are food insecure (FSMS, 2015), due to successive years of drought, poor infrastructure and inaccessibility. The refugees now outnumber the local population by a ratio of 6 to 1, and have strained natural resources, in particular pastures, water and firewood, leading to environmental degradation and increased tension with the host population. Although programmes to support refugee self-reliance through income generation activities, household food production and literacy and training programmes have been effective in improving the livelihoods of the participants, they remain limited in scope and scale in relation to the actual need.

Refugees are unable to entirely subsist on the revenue or production from these schemes and require food assistance to meet their basic food needs. The current general food distribution ration should be maintained and supplemented with a cash ration of 2,000 UAM to cover for the 100 kcal ration deficit as well transportation and cooking fuel costs. The strategy over the next year should focus on sustaining the current quality of nutrition and public health programmes; reinforcing and expanding self-reliance programmes; providing comprehensive support to vulnerable groups and people with special needs; promoting literacy and school enrolment; and implementing joint programmes with the host community for livestock production, water management and environmental protection.

Many shortfalls identified during the JAM were as a direct result of funding shortfalls of 87 percent for UNHCR and 30 percent for WFP. Late contributions led to pipeline breaks for WFP while UNHCR had to limit or reduce many of its programmes. In order to implement the JAM recommendations for 2016-2017, a concerted resource mobilization strategy is necessary to maintain the refugees’ food security.

II: INTRODUCTION

a) background

Following the arrival of Malian refugees in Mauritania in 2012 a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between UNHCR, WFP and the Government of Mauritania, represented by the Commissariat a la Sécurité Alimentaire (CSA) to provide food assistance to refugees. The general objectives of the provision of food assistance is to save lives and protect the livelihoods of the refugees in an emergency context, with the specific objectives of: improving the food intake of refugees by providing food assistance in sufficient quantities to women, men, boys and girls in safe and secure environment and reducing malnutrition rates amongst children aged 6 to 59 months, as well as pregnant and lactating women.

A year after the outbreak of the crisis, WFP and UNHCR conducted a Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) in May 2013 to assess the food security and nutrition situation of Malian refugees in Mberra camp and of the host communities in surrounding villages by: analyzing their food and nutrition status; reviewing the quality and relevance of the food and nutrition assistance provided; and elaborating a joint plan of action for 2014-2015. The findings and recommendations of the 2013 JAM were critical in defining the strategy and mobilizing other key actors in providing a more comprehensive food and nutrition assistance programme to Malian refugees.

Since 2013 several activities were put in place to improve the food security and livelihood of refugees with a high rate of success. The most notable of these achievements has been the development of a comprehensive multi-sectoral nutrition strategy following several joint SMART/SENS surveys that has led to the reduction of global acute malnutrition (GAM) rates from 20 percent [17.2 - 23.1] to 9.9 percent [7.6 -12.8] and severe acute malnutrition (SAM) rates from 5.9 percent [4.4 -7.9] to 0.8 percent [0.3 - 2.1] between July 2012 and October 2014. The nutrition surveys attributed the improvement of malnutrition rates to the joint efforts of various sectors and actors, including the provision of high quantities and quality of water; the provision of food assistance; hygiene promotion activities; improved food preparation and feeding practices and adequate health services. During this period the food distribution modality was changed from “group” distributions through camp committee leaders to “scooping” to individual households and a food basket monitoring system was put in place. In addition, blanket feeding programmes were expanded to children from 6 to 59 months of age and pregnant and lactating women and a school feeding programme was introduced. Post Distribution Monitoring (PDM) exercises and a Household Economy Approach (HEA) analysis noted that the provision of free education and free health care services enabled refugee households to save a greater part of their ration for consumption rather than trading it to pay for school fees and medication.

Over the past two years, pilot and small scale programmes were introduced to improve household food security and promote refugee livelihoods, through self-reliance programmes that focused on income generation activities (IGA) such as petty trading and artisanal production, promoting household food production through the development of communal and individual vegetable gardens and the provision of dairy goats to vulnerable households as well as through education and training programmes providing adult literacy and training for income-generation activities. Other household food security programmes included a pilot programme that provided cash to supplement general food distributions for vulnerable households, in order for them to supplement their food intake with more preferred or nutritious commodities and pay for the transportation of their rations and cooking fuel.

Overall, a comprehensive and coordinated programme has been put in place over the last three years to address the overall nutrition, food security and livelihood needs of the Malian refugees, despite several challenges and a severe funding gap of 87 percent for UNHCR’s Malian refugee programme in Mauritania in 2015, and of 30 percent for WFP’s Emergency Operation (EMOP) for refugees. This resulted in many programmes being limited in scale and scope relative to the actual need as well as irregular and incomplete food ration distributions, especially in 2015.
The perceived stabilization of humanitarian programmes, coupled with the relative integration of the refugees into the social and economic fabric of their host country, as well as the resumption of cross border movements with Mali for transhumance and commercial activities, led the international community to believe that it was now time to move away from general food distribution activities in an emergency context, to a more targeted food assistance programme. This would include the consolidation of self-reliance programmes for durable solutions for household food security over the next two years. It is in this light that a Joint Assessment Mission was commissioned for 2015 prior to the elaboration of strategy for 2016-2017 for the two agencies and their key partners.