The IPC Technical Manual Version 3.0 further reinforces the IPC principles of transparency and neutrality of the analysis by providing clearer guidance and tools on the analytical process, including technical consensus building and quality assurance. Emphasis is also placed on strategic communications to ensure the right information is conveyed to the right people at the right time.

So what's new in this 3.0 version?

For the first time, the IPC Technical Manual includes a complete range of classification scales: Acute Food Insecurity, Chronic Food Insecurity and Acute Malnutrition. Each scale informs specific types of action needed, thus providing decision-makers with invaluable information for the strategic design of actions to address food insecurity and malnutrition. The scales have been fully harmonized, thus enabling:

• new scales to be applied more easily at the country level as protocols are shared across all scales, allowing analysts greater fluidity across the entire IPC portfolio;
• the path for integration of the three scales, with similar analytical parameters and a consolidated conceptual framework, increasing the ability to compare and establish linkages between the three conditions.

In addition, revisions have been made based on lessons learned and latest technical developments, including revisions to reference tables, parameters for identification of areas that receive significant humanitarian food assistance, as well as parameters for estimating projected populations expected to be acutely food insecure. The IPC Technical Manual Version 3.0 also includes more elaborate communication protocols, with more attractive and adaptive modular communication templates. Throughout the Manual, guidance to users has been refined and made more precise in order to promote higher-quality analysis and global comparability. The manual includes new protocols such as:

• Famine classification: Protocols for use in the most severe crisis contexts, setting the global benchmark for declarations of Famine.
• Classification of areas with limited or no access to collect evidence: Specific protocols for classification under extreme circumstances, maintaining IPC standards through adherence to minimally recommended parameters.
• Evidence reliability assessments: More specific criteria providing better guidance on the use of evidence for classifications.

The IPC Technical Manual Version 3.0 is organized into two parts:

• Part I provides the general user, including donors, implementing partners and governments, with adequate information to appreciate and critically utilize IPC products.
• Part II provides the analyst with the protocols, including tools and procedures, to conduct the classification itself.

Between the publication of the IPC Technical Manual Version 2.0 and 3.0, a number of Guidance Notes and Working Papers covering specific aspects of the IPC were developed. These are part of IPC Resources and provide useful supporting guidance for this Manual, which will be of particular interest to advanced analysts, trainers and facilitators. The IPC Resources can be accessed through the IPC website.