ReliefWeb

SITUATION ANALYSIS

In March, the sector provided food assistance to around 950,000 individuals: 900,000 Syrian refugees with e-card assistance (redemption gure), 8,000 Syrian refugees and Lebanese returnees with food parcels, and 43,000 Palestine refugees from Syria with cash. WFP e-cards were loaded with US$19 in March. Some 41 focus group discussions on the impact of reductions on the beneciaries were conducted throughout Lebanon. The discussions conrmed that families had already been forced to prioritize their needs and adopt various negative coping strategies, notably reducing the frequency and quantity of meals, prioritizing children’s food needs and increasingly relying on debt.

WFP led an e-card validation exercise with 74 percent of households (131,495) successfully completing the process. The non-validated e-cards (30,696 households) and pending e-cards (6,489 households) will not be uploaded on the 5th of April and will be called to the last round of validation in mid-April.

WFP and its cooperating partners continued household surveys to identify the most vulnerable households which require assistance. By the end of March, over 16,000 households were surveyed for targeting with some 64 percent found to be eligible for food assistance. Multi-functional teams in the last week of March reviewed and endorsed the results of the vulnerability scoring analysis of the households. As a result of vulnerability analysis, 3,017 households (15,291 individuals) have been informed that they will no longer be receiving WFP assistance starting May 2015.
Technical trainings of 500 farmers and handling of materials and equipment to carry out poultry activities are ongoing across Lebanon.

Farm eld school groups received all necessary material to build 25 chicken houses in Akkar, Baalbek-Hermel, Bekaa, Mount Lebanon, Nabatiye and South governorates, each to be used by 20 farmers in the same region to practice poultry farming. In addition, the yearly livestock vaccination campaign that was initiated in mid-February is still ongoing across Lebanon with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Overall, more than 171,500 animals (including cattle and small ruminants) were vaccinated by the end of March.