Attachments
Overview
Key messages
• WFP reached over 47,000 people with direct assistance and indirectly benefitted more than 59,000 people with assets, capacity and services, as well as 1.1 million people through national policies and programmes.
The final year of WFP's country strategic plan (CSP) 2019-2023 marked a turning point in the programme cycle, crucial to achieving established goals while designing the new CSP for 2024-2028. At this critical juncture, WFP was able to reflect on the past four years to document accomplishments and lessons learned to identify a new strategic direction.
During 2023, WFP concluded a multi-year plan to alleviate the country's persistent food insecurity and malnutrition burden, reduce climate shock risks, and streamline emergency preparedness and response capacities. The country office's programmatic portfolio was defined by five strategic outcomes: advocacy and evidence generation for Zero Hunger, nutrition throughout the life cycle, emergency preparedness, anticipatory actions and climate change, crisis response and service provision.
Through its interventions, WFP reached 47,188 women, men, girls and boys, including 5,960 people with disabilities.
WFP's assistance modalities included cash-based transfers and in-kind food distributions, including specialized nutritious food to prevent malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. Another central programmatic initiative was strengthening the capacity of national authorities and partners through nutritional education and counselling to promote nutritious diets and healthy lifestyles. Overall, 55 percent of individuals receiving support were women and girls.
To materialize its outcome of strengthening the coordination of national institutions towards Zero Hunger, WFP supported ministries in launching the National Plan for Food Sovereignty, Food Security and Nutrition 2023-2026. This plan strengthened the policy and governance framework for food security and nutrition towards resilient and equitable food systems, a key milestone in consolidating WFP's role as a policy partner of choice for the Government.
Furthermore, WFP was key in the emergency food security assessment and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification that informed evidence-based decision making and further contributed to WFP’s positioning on policy development. This collaboration demonstrated that WFP was a key evidence-generating partner for the Government in designing rural interventions to improve nutrition, food systems, public health and social protection.
In response to torrential rains in November 2023, WFP delivered 47 mt of specialized nutritious food to 152 primary health care units (UNAP, for its Spanish acronym) and 40 early childhood care centres. This distribution was complemented by training 120 doctors, nurses and health and nutrition agents from the National Institute for Comprehensive Early Childhood Care.
With the Ministry of Public Health, WFP informed communities about the health services available at UNAPs, provided 10 mt of fortified complementary food to households in need and held information sessions on maternal and child nutrition and support for completing routine vaccinations.
WFP expanded the reach of social protection programmes for people living with HIV (PLHIV) by supporting the registration of 577 PLHIV within the Government's Single Beneficiary System. Additionally, 400 PLHIV, including community counsellors, received nutritional counselling for more efficient use of the social protection transfer. This activity will be critical in 2024 to enhance dialogue with the Government and PLHIV advocacy groups and to ensure that this population is prioritized within the Government's emergency response. With the National Institute of Technical and Vocational Training, WFP implemented the innovative agricultural Casa Sombra programme. This project built tented structures to encourage year-round crop production, including a built-in seedling bank that can produce 30,000 vegetable seedlings every three months to diversify cultivation. Moreover, the project installed 170 gardens in PLHIV households, supported under the family farming programme of the Ministry of Agriculture, and established a communal garden. Increased production from the use of the seedlings of the Casa Sombra also helped PLHIV improve their income by selling vegetables.
To streamline anticipatory action initiatives for drought, WFP significantly expanded the coverage of these programmes in the Yaque del Norte Basin, tripling the number of households from 1,290 to 3,913. Over 20,000 people from highly affected rural communities were reached. WFP was a key crisis response actor for the Government and led the United Nations Emergency Technical Team in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona. Building on learning from the rollout in 2022, WFP assisted the Government in optimizing shock-responsive social protection and reaching the most vulnerable, specifically those populations outside the social protection programme and undocumented migrants.
Cash-based transfer operations were implemented until August 2023, when WFP distributed food assistance for three to four months to 3,890 households (19,450 people). Another 577 households (3,215 people) in vulnerable conditions received additional assistance through the National Social Protection programme Supérate.
In 2023, WFP activated its bilateral service provision to support partners with on-demand services for national and international logistics support. It included activating the logistic corridor between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, a significant achievement for scaling up emergency response capabilities, specifically in getting humanitarian cargo to reach affected populations.