FAO’s Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH) project, in collaboration with the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU) of the Ministry of Food, held two workshops in order to improve food security analysis and decision-making using the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

The IPC is a global, multi-partner initiative that facilitates decision-making through evidence and consensus-based food security analysis. It employs rigorous analytical tools and protocols to classify the severity and nature of food insecurity, helping governments and other humanitarian actors to evaluate imminent or current food-insecure areas and to take action.

Around 50 participants from government, academia, the private sector, and civil society organizations convened for two five-day workshops in Dhaka. Participants completed a Chronic Food Insecurity Map for 64 districts in Bangladesh. They estimated the sizes and locations of the food insecure populations and applied the IPC Chronic Classification to a wide range of data sets, including household survey data, in order to identify key drivers of long-term food insecurity.

Speaking at one of the workshops, FAO Representative in Bangladesh Robert D Simpson stressed the importance of the IPC. He said: “FAO will encourage the use of this data to guide and facilitate policy dialogue and debates at different levels to highlight the needs and interests of individual consumers, small-scale food producers, grassroots and community-based organizations, and social movements. The analysis has to be leveraged into policy and action plan designs for implementation at the national level.”

Thirty countries practice the IPC. Since 2012 when the IPC was introduced in Bangladesh, it has been supported by FPMU – the government agency responsible for facilitating development of the IPC in Bangladesh – and by FAO.

MUCH will continue to assist in the development of the IPC as a key instrument for decision-making within the longer-term food security and nutrition strategy of Bangladesh. These include the new National Food and Nutrition Security Policy of Bangladesh and its Plan of Action, the 8th Five Year Plan, the Second National Plan of Action for Nutrition (NPAN2), the Second Country Investment Plan: Nutrition-Sensitive Food Systems (CIP2), and its annual Monitoring Reports. MUCH is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union (EU).