Attachments
In Numbers
5.4 million Malawians (20 percent of the population) face chronic food insecurity
USD 4.1 million six-month (July – December 2023) net funding requirements for WFP
51,000 refugees and asylum-seekers receiving cash assistance
Strategic Outcome 1
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Cyclone Freddy flood response: Following the passage of Cyclone Freddy, which brought floods across the country, the Government of Malawi led a response plan along with humanitarian partners to reach affected populations. WFP complemented the Government’s maize distribution with two months of food basket items (vegetable oil, pulses and super cereal), in the four most-affected districts of Chikwawa, Mulanje, Nsanje, and Phalombe to reach 507,000 people. WFP uses cash-based transfers instead of in-kind distributions in areas with market functionality.
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Refugees: June monthly distributions were completed via cash (e-payments) for 11,000 refugee households (approximately 51,000 refugees) in Dzaleka refugee camp. Since May 2023, WFP expanded its unconditional cash assistance to cover all refugees registered with UNHCR as living in Dzaleka. WFP has been facing challenges with an increasing caseload of refugees and rising food prices and limited funding to boost self-reliance approaches. Due to resource constraints, WFP is unable to provide a 100 percent ration equivalent to full monthly food needs and will switch to providing only 50 percent of the ration size from July.
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WFP has resourced USD 1.2 million for cash assistance to refugees from the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, Germany, and the United States Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. However, a USD 1.6 million funding gap remains for WFP to continue providing food assistance at 75 percent ration size to refugees until the end of the year.
Strategic Outcome 2
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School feeding: Under the home-grown school feeding programme, 183 schools (out of 216) temporarily switched to in-kind feeding to allow sufficient time for farmers to recover from the shock in Chikwawa, Nsanje, Phalombe, and Zomba districts. Emergency school feeding take-home rations were provided for selected schools not covered under WFP’s regular school feeding programme reaching 15,000 children. Due to quality issues of the super cereal, WFP switched to cash-based transfers of take-home rations to reach children in schools affected by the floods.
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Social protection: In collaboration with the Government and partners, an after-action-review of the 2022/2023 lean season response was conducted. The review included the use of the social protection system jointly supported by UNICEF and WFP for targeting and delivery of lean season assistance as well as the complementary activities implemented during the response. The final report is expected to be published in July.