Attachments
Operational Updates
• Presidential and legislative elections in Niger will take place on 27 December. In anticipation for any possible disruptions to operations, combined WFP November and December distributions are in progress to be finalized by the end of December.
• As part of the 16 Days of Activism to end Gender-Based Violence campaign, WFP was conducting awareness raising, visibility and advocacy activities through various communication platforms and social networks.
• The continued impact of access constraints is being felt across all operations, including crisis response and development/resilience sites, since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a Note Verbale on 2 September restricting all diplomatic and international organization travel outside of all main city limits unless accompanied by military escort. This presented major challenges to WFP’s ongoing planned activity implementation in all areas of the country. WFP put in place alternative monitoring measures to sustain operations but is also proactively supporting access negotiation efforts to resume field missions as soon as possible.
• WFP continued to provide emergency distributions to flood-affected households, in close collaboration with the Government and partners. As of 2 December, WFP reached some 240,000 people through food and cash distributions in all regions in the first round of planned distributions. Preparations for the second round of distributions are underway.
• WFP plans to reach over 670,000 beneficiaries through the Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) COVID-19 response in 2020. The ASP response in urban areas of Tahoua has been completed, where 8,774 households received cash distributions and the Post Distribution Monitoring (PDM) data has been collected. Despite the restriction of movement of UN staff, preparations for the extension of the ASP response in rural areas are underway through an advance funding with a collateral funding under negotiation and are expected to be completed by mid-December 2020. With regards to the ASP COVID19 response in Agadez, discussions are still underway on how best to conduct this activity, taking into account all security risks. Coordination meetings are regularly held with UNICEF, World Bank and the Government to share latest updates on ASP COVID-19 response and harmonize the approaches including those related to ASP capacity strengthening priorities.
• WFP school canteens resumed mid-October in 922 schools targeting 155,000 beneficiaries including supporting cash grants for adolescent girls and issuing direct cash transfers in some of the schools. All COVID-19 preventives measures are in place, coupled with community sensitization.
• WFP resumed community food assistance for assets activities (FFA) for 237,000 beneficiaries in resilience sites, including new sites in Diffa for 25,000 beneficiaries under the joint WFP and UNICEF resilience and social cohesion project. All COVID-19 preventives measures are in place.