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Global analysis of food and nutrition security situation in food crisis hotspots

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Executive summary

This report provides a global overview of the food insecurity situation in global food crisis hotspots due to different crises and natural disasters, to support the programming of the Pro-resilience Action (PRO-ACT) 2016 funding mechanism, a component of the Global Public Goods and Challenges (GPGC) thematic programme of the European Union. The needs assessment consists of estimating the number of food-insecure people in countries that have been affected by a food crisis in 2015 based mainly on publicly released reports. The table below summarises the available data as in January 2016 in 70 countries analysed for this report. In a few cases (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Cameroon), the numbers only relate to particular areas within the country, and are therefore not representative of the national level. Great efforts have been made to harmonise the approaches across countries. However, as the input from the data sources may differ significantly across countries, the final figures may not correctly represent the current situation in the field.

1 Background

In 2012, the EU made a policy commitment to focus interventions on building the resilience of vulnerable communities by better targeting the root causes of food insecurity both in the geographical and thematic instruments of the new Multi-annual Financial Framework. This includes component 3 “Supporting the poor and food insecure to react to crises and strengthen resilience” of the Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FSSA) thematic instrument under the Global Public Goods and Challenges Programme (GPGC). This FSSA resilience-building thematic mechanism aims to ensure the complementarity of instruments for high-impact aid. It has an indicative budget of €525 million over the 2014-2020 period. The specific actions and the list of countries that would receive support are decided every year based on the following criteria: i) evidenced-based needs assessment (number of food-insecure people); ii) nature of the food and nutrition crisis; iii) capacity and complementarity of instruments; iv) other factors of vulnerability, including political considerations.

This report addresses the two first criteria (needs assessment and nature of the crises) in the framework of the 2016 financial programming of the Pro-resilience Action (PRO-ACT). The principle is to evaluate the number of people who were in a food insecurity situation in the previous year (2015 for this exercise), i.e. in Phase 2 and above of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), and to identify as far as possible the main causes of food insecurity in selected countries. The PROACT interventions complement the humanitarian interventions of the previous year to help the community rebuild their livelihoods and improve their resilience to future shocks.

The needs assessment is conducted in two phases: (i) identification of the main areas of concern (countries and regions) based on a rapid review of known crises; and (ii) detailed analysis of each selected country. The needs assessment is global and aims to include all countries that have been affected by a food crisis in 2015. The origin of the food crisis may be a particular shock or disaster such as an earthquake, cyclone, drought, etc. and/or protracted crises, namely prolonged armed conflicts. Countries that are chronically vulnerable to food crises and have large populations of foodinsecure people are included. A total of 70 countries were identified, estimating the number of foodinsecure populations classified (wherever possible) according to two categories of IPC phases. Twenty countries were then further analysed, and a detailed narrative on their situations is provided in this report. They are countries with discrepancies in their assessments from different sources and countries with complex situations that combine several risk factors, for instance countries with a very low socioeconomic development that are also subject to violent conflicts. The following countries were eventually selected for the detailed analysis: Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan in the Horn of Africa; Gambia, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa; the Central African Republic (CAR); Yemen and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in Asia; Haiti and the countries of the Central American Dry Corridor (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua); and Papua New Guinea. The types of crises affecting each of those countries are described in the respective sections. In addition, a dedicated section summarises the impacts of the 2015 El Niño episode on food security in countries most affected and of interest to EU Food Security programmes. The number of countries that were analysed increased from circa 40 for the previous analysis in January 2015 to 70 in this edition of the report (January 2016), mainly because of the impact of El Niño.