In situations of conflict and natural disaster where food and/or nutritional emergencies are declared, the international system supports humanitarian responses. Food assistance can take many forms including in-kind food aid, vouchers or nutrition-specific programmes.
Historically, food assistance has for a variety of reasons been inadequate in both quantity and quality. This is now being redressed to an extent with food aid programmes including nutrition elements, though there are still concerns.
Food crises and emergency responses
The international community has become more adept at saving the lives of wasted children in the context of catastrophes than in the context of development. The last 10 years have seen dramatic improvements in standardising the technical approaches to acute malnutrition, in refining these approaches, tying them to standards and targets and in allowing room for innovation (especially in the introduction of Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs).
Evaluating, documenting and building on these experiences will enable further progress on the creation of a minimum set of operational standards.
Safety nets
Social transfers to protect the chronically food insecure and promote improved livelihoods can be complementary to investments in agricultural productivity and growth. If they are regular, predictable and transfer a sufficient and market-price indexed amount, social transfers can insure the poor against shocks and stresses, and reduce the need for people to sell assets and engage in risky behaviours for their survival.
DFID works to strengthen the evidence on the type of social transfer which under clearly defined conditions has the greatest positive impact on food and nutrition security.
In some cases, social transfers also generate a positive impact on the supply of food. Zimbabwe’s Protracted Relief Programme generated over two months of additional food supply in an average beneficiary household. This increased expenditure and food availability can translate into improvements in different nutritional indicators.
An extensive assessment of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) finds that three-quarters of participants consumed a higher quantity and quality of food compared to the previous year.
Strengthening resilience
All rapid and slow onset disasters trigger or reinforce an acute need for nutritious food. Most of this does not need to happen, as is confirmed again by the Horn of Africa famine, the extent of which is a result of a lack of resilience of vulnerable populations. Food and nutrition security is at the heart of all of DFID’s efforts to strengthen resilience so that people can not only cope with shocks, bounce back faster and better, but also continue on their trajectory towards improved livelihoods and emerge from poverty.
DFID has committed itself to making resilience a central priority of all its programmes in vulnerable countries and regions. This includes both humanitarian and development programmes and the area in between.