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Overview
Road to a Resilient, Food-secure Philippines
In 2023, the Philippines continued on its path to economic recovery and progress amid the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global food crisis, and a significant rise in climate shocks.
WFP reached more than 54,000 people in addressing their food and nutrition needs and strengthening resilience against climate shocks, mainly in poverty-stricken and hazard-prone areas, including the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). WFP’s efforts aimed to strengthen the Government and partners’ capacities, in line with its Country Strategic Plan (CSP) 2018-2023 and national priorities set forth by the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028.
Drawing lessons from the large-scale emergency response to Typhoon Rai (local name Odette) in 2021, WFP supported the Government in enhancing its emergency preparedness and response systems and shock-responsive social protection programmes, primarily by providing systems-oriented capacity strengthening support. In parallel, WFP augmented 12 government emergency response operations with logistics and emergency telecommunications support, to ensure that crisis-affected populations could meet their immediate humanitarian needs. This entailed mobilizing 363 trucks to transport government relief items, including family food packs and non-food items, that reached more than 2.8 million people across the country.
Moreover, with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, WFP co-developed two emergency telecommunications vehicles to promptly reach geographically-challenging terrains (e.g., mountain tops) with radio and internet connectivity services. To ensure seamless coordination among humanitarian responders at the onset of emergencies, these telecommunications units are strategically positioned in WFP warehouses, should augmentation of connectivity be required.
In April 2023, WFP launched the Multi-Hazard Impact-based Forecasting and Early Warning System to institutionalize an anticipatory action (AA) approach in the Philippines.[1] Together with other UN agencies, WFP continued to enhance the AA programme's design and implementation to support the most at-risk populations before the forecasted landfall of typhoons.
This year, WFP supported the Government with the implementation of two national priority initiatives, by:
- Co-designing Walang Gutom (No Hunger) 2027: Government Food e-Voucher, a social protection programme that aims to reach more than 1 million food-poor households with local, nutritious food until 2027; and
- Enhancing the national School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) by integrating a home-grown school feeding (HGSF) approach.
Both initiatives contribute to food security and community resilience by creating a demand for smallholder farmers, agriculture cooperatives, and fisherfolks to supply their commodities for food-insecure families and schoolchildren. In BARMM, with WFP’s continued advocacy, local governments' allocated financial resources for the pilot implementation of HGSF in nine schools across seven municipalities. In 2024, WFP will generate evidence from these pilots to establish the groundwork in creating scalable programmes and unlock potential investments from the Government towards a sustainable school meals programme. Moreover, WFP will implement a robust evidence generation plan on the pilot Walang Gutom Programme to inform the eventual national scale-up.
On the nutrition front, WFP supported the Government in (i) enhancing key nutrition policies and plans such as the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition 2022-2028 and (ii) promoting adequate healthy diets and reducing malnutrition. This also entailed facilitating knowledge exchange visits with Tajikistan on food fortification and with India on central kitchen, participated by the government and WFP representatives through South-South and Triangular Cooperation.
In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, WFP applied a conflict-sensitive lens in strengthening regional governments’ livelihood policies and programmes. With an aim of enhancing community resilience and achieving food security, WFP worked closely with communities, including decommissioned- and soon-to-be decommissioned combatants, identifying their needs to inform responsive interventions, and reached more than 50,000 people.
Along with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2:** Zero Hunger,**** SDG 17**:** Partnerships for the Goals** serves as a critical pillar under WFP’s CSP 2018-2023. To reach its CSP objectives, WFP collaborated with governments, international financial institutions, UN agencies, academia, the private sector, civil society groups, and communities. In 2023, WFP worked on the UN Joint Programme on Conflict Transformation in Conflict-Affected Areas in BARMM, together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Development Programme, and the International Organization for Migration to reinvigorate efforts to the peace process through socioeconomic and peacebuilding investments in BARMM. With the new CSP 2024-2028, WFP will continue to strengthen the Government’s emergency preparedness and response capacity and strengthen the resilience of national social protection programmes.