A side event from the 46th plenary of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) co-organized by the Canada, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund For Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

In October 2015, the CFS endorsed the Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crisis (CFS-FFA), which confirmed the importance of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in protracted crises, and brought to a multistakeholder level some of the key messages of the three Rome-based Agencies (RBA) joint conceptual framework on resilience for food security and nutrition, adopted in April 2015.

In 2015 and 2016, the RBAs co-facilitated CFS events on resilience, such as two side-events and a plenary event, which triggered interest from multiple stakeholders in the RBA endeavour to move from concept to field operationalization of resilience.

In March 2017, Canada and the RBAs launched a flagship 5-year Joint Resilience Initiative to strengthen resilience in protracted crisis contexts in the Democractic Republic of the Congo, the Niger and Somalia. The initiative is directly relevant to the operationalization by the RBAs and their partners of the CFS-FFA and its 11 principles. While hunger and acute food insecurity are on the rise globally, protracted crisis, fragile and humanitarian contexts, in which hunger levels are three times higher than in average developing countries, and gender inequalities deeper and more acute, pose the greatest challenge to the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The joint resilience programme, using a participatory and inclusive approach, is combining and sequencing the short-, medium- and long-term analytical, planning, programmatic and operational tools and approaches for resilience of the three agencies. It represents an unprecedented effort to involve, support and invest in the same vulnerable communities over a five-year period through integrated, context-specific, gender- and nutrition-sensitive assistance packages. These are identified by communities through participatory planning and aligned to national priorities. It builds on and complements other recent and on-going initiatives funded by other resource partners (including, but not limited to, France, Belgium, USA, Sweden, European Commission, CERF, etc.), in the same countries and same areas. It focuses particularly on sustainably improving child nutrition, gender equality, peaceful governance of renewable natural resources, agricultural productivity and livelihoods resilience in three fragile contexts affected by violence, conflict, recurrent climate and other shocks. Finally, the programme is also a platform for other partners (national Governments, Farmer and Rural Women groups and organizations, other UN agencies such as UNICEF and UN Women, research partners, etc.) to join and collaborate.

After 2 years of implementation and looking at the remaining 3 years, the side event will provide the opportunity to share with CFS stakeholders the recent progress, achievements and upcoming priorities under the RBA partnership on resilience in the three countries and beyond.