Work on this theme focuses on: preventing or mitigating crisis; bridging the gap between short and long term responses to crises; and strengthening the resilience of households, livelihoods, communities and countries to shock and stress. Broadly defined research areas are: food security in conflict; chronic crises and complex emergencies; links between HIV/AIDS and food insecurity; and reducing vulnerability to different types of crises, including natural disasters.

For each of these categories, ESA: analyses the economic, political and social causes of food insecurity; assesses the food security impact of crisis and crisis response; elaborates criteria and information needs to better characterise and understand crises; and gives guidance to context-specific programme and policy responses.

FAO has developed a new international portal on food security to provide access to information and online networks to field practitioners and food security and policy analysts. The multilingual Food Security and Complex Emergencies information portal, http://www.fao.org/crisisandhunger, has been funded by the European Commission and is managed by ESA. It is a comprehensive online database that focuses on various aspects of emergencies as they relate to food security and presents information from reliable data sources, including FAO, in a variety of formats to meet the diverse needs of different actors in the food security arena.