Peru Assistance Overview, July 2024

CONTEXT

• Venezuela’s economic and political crisis—characterized by limited access to food, health care, and income-generating opportunities—continues to drive outward migration to countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, including Peru. Of the nearly 7.8 million Venezuelans who have fled their home country since 2017, more than 1.5 million resided in Peru as of May 2024, according to the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela.
• Food assistance remains an urgent humanitarian need among the Venezuelan population in Peru, with an estimated 740,000 Venezuelans facing moderate or severe acute food insecurity in 2024, according to the UN World Food Program (WFP). With limited access to essential services and formal employment opportunities, many Venezuelans in Peru have adopted negative coping strategies in response to food needs, including reducing food consumption levels, selling productive household assets, and participating in exploitative or dangerous income-generating activities.
• Since 2020, deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in Peru have strained the country’s health and social service systems; limited household purchasing power and livelihood opportunities; and exacerbated food, health, protection, and water, sanitation, and hygiene needs across the country, particularly among low-income Peruvians, migrants, and refugees.
• Peru is prone to various natural hazards, including earthquakes, floods, droughts, and volcanic eruptions, particularly given the country’s location along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a nearly 25,000-mile geographic belt in the Pacific Ocean with significant seismic activity. Notably, heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding resulted in the deaths of at least 32 people, the displacement of nearly 4,900 other people, and the damage or destruction of more than 2,000 homes across Peru between late February and early March, according to Government of Peru (GoP) authorities.

ASSISTANCE

• USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (USAID/BHA) supports humanitarian partners in Peru to provide both disaster and early recovery, risk reduction, and resilience (ER4) assistance. During Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, USAID/BHA has prioritized food assistance, including multipurpose cash and nutrition assistance for Venezuelan migrants and refugees in Peru and delivered emergency food and protection assistance to at-risk Peruvian households and Indigenous populations.
• USAID/BHA has provided nearly $150 million in response to the humanitarian needs of Venezuelan migrants and refugees in Peru since FY 2017. USAID/BHA partners Save the Children Federation (SCF), WFP, and World Vision are working to address acute food insecurity among Venezuelans in Peru by providing food and nutrition assistance, including cash transfers for food. In FY 2024, partners reached populations in need with food assistance and complementary nutrition interventions—which aim to improve nutrition practices and outcomes among children ages five years and younger and pregnant and lactating women—to tens of thousands of Venezuelans and host community members in Peru. In addition, USAID/BHA partners have established lactation spaces, which include a lactation specialist for people in transit and services available to pregnant and lactating women and children on the move. While lactation spaces are primarily located within health facilities, some are also located in community spaces and markets and are available to individuals of all nationalities, many of whom can only avail of breastfeeding counseling in these public spaces.
• USAID/BHA also provides sustained, multi-year funding to nongovernmental organizations and UN partners to conduct ER4 activities that enhance community and livelihood resilience against shocks, including natural disasters. In FY 2024, USAID/BHA partner Centro de Estudios y Prevención de Desastres promoted localized disaster risk management (DRM) activities in Peru’s Lima Region—an area particularly vulnerable to earthquakes and landslides—by building community awareness of DRM best practices through social media campaigns. These campaigns increased vulnerable communities’ knowledge of natural hazards in the region and encouraged communities—particularly those residing in informal settlements built on unstable, sloped terrain—to bolster local preparedness and response capacities through community disaster action plans.
• USAID/BHA is supporting SCF to provide case management services—including legal, psychological, and social services—to children and women at risk of gender-based violence (GBV) and distributing cash assistance to survivors of GBV to support immediate needs and decrease their vulnerability to violence and exploitation. In addition, SCF is facilitating awareness sessions for caregivers, community networks, and families to promote safe environments and bolster support systems. These sessions aim to limit the likelihood of at-risk populations engaging in negative coping mechanisms, such as child labor, early marriage, and family separation.
• With support from USAID/BHA, WFP is delivering emergency food assistance to food-insecure populations in Peru and providing logistics support to the GoP to facilitate nationwide GoP-led food distributions. Additionally, to combat rising acute food insecurity among low-income individuals residing in urban areas, WFP supports community kitchens and ollas communes, or community pots, which collect discarded food surplus from wholesale suppliers for delivery to community-led canteens where hot meals are provided to individuals in need.