Food aid and livelihoods: Challenges and opportunities in complex emergencies

Valerie Guarnier ;Agriculture and Economic Development Analysis Division

Food aid and livelihoods: Challenges and opportunities in complex emergencies

FAO International Workshop on “Food Security in Complex Emergencies: building policy frameworks to address longer-term programming challenges” Tivoli, 23-25 September 2003

Year of publication 2003

Author Valerie Guarnier ;Agriculture and Economic Development Analysis Division

Product type Meeting

Edition 1

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) This paper describes the challenges and opportunities faced by WFP in providing food aid to protect and sustain livelihoods in complex emergencies. The first part summarizes the key characteristics of complex emergencies and highlights some of the related operational challenges. The second part describes the strategies used by people affected by crisis to cope and recover, and presents some of the benefits of supporting livelihoods as a component of the emergency response. The paper ends by prop osing some implications for programming livelihood support strategies in complex emergencies based on WFP’s extensive experience in this context. Of particular importance is understanding the new dimension of risk; linking pre-emergency interventions to the emergency response; integrating livelihoods assessments into emergency needs assessments; improving the timing of interventions; as well as strong advocacy and partnerships.

Language English

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Emergency in Ituri, DRC: Political complexity, land and other challenges in restoring food security
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This paper explains the political and economic complexities of the ongoing Ituri crisis, focusing on the role of land. In Ituri, mineral-rich land is at the core of the crisis and therefore, at the core of the longer-term programming needed to restore food security. But food insecurity in eastern DRC has a history. The paper argues that the ambigous Bakajika land law, introduced in 1973 and responsible for the emergence of a vast class of landless people, lies at the root of large-scale poverty, insecurity and spiralling violence. Implementation of this law in Ituri, and subsequent contestations by food insecure farmers in 1999, caused the initial upheavel that led to full-scale war with the foreign participation of the armies of Uganda and Rwanda, and atrocities not seen before. The paper advocates an overhaul of the Bakajika law that will respect people’s right to ancestral land and thus enhance livelihood and food security. Appropriate land reform will also reduce the likelihood of a recurrence of Ituri’s complex emergency.
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FAO International Workshop on “Food Security in Complex Emergencies: building policy frameworks to address longer-term programming challenges” Tivoli, 23-25 September 2003
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Countries that manifest high levels of food insecurity genearlly experience in high levels of conflict, which results in complex emergencies. These countries need to adopt well-planned, short-, medium- and long-term measures to improve their food security situation. The food security policy should cover all sectors of the food chain, including increasing food availability through production and importation, improving marketing efficiency, increasing people’s purchasing power and setting up effec tive early warning and food information systems (EWFIS). An effective EWFIS should use data spanning the entire food chain (ie meteorological, remote sensing, agricultural statistics etc). EWFIS is useful not only for monitoring the food security situation to detect areas and segments of the population that are facing deterioriating food security, but also for providing relevant data (eg baseline data, vulnerability maps etc) need for longer term planning to move the affected populations from vu lnerability to sustainable development.
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Final Report of the International Workshop: Food Security and Crisis in Countries Subject to Complex Emergencies September 2003 2003

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The number and scale of conflict-related, food security emergencies is increasing, and the role of human-induced conflict in escalating a natural crisis, such as a drought, to a food security emergency has grown in importance over the last decade. HIV/AIDS is another important factor exacerbating natural and human-induced crises. But while the number of short-term emergency interventions is increasing and funds are diverted towards humanitarian aid, resources for long-term development aid h ave stagnated or decreased. The challenge is to create a new framework which includes responses to both short-term emergencies and sustainable food security. However, while humanitarianism is guided by a clear set of principles, concepts for longer-term policies and interventions require further development.