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After heavy and above-average rains fell in September 2015 in the Southern Province and Western Area, an estimated 22 000 people were affected and thousands of hectares of land were destroyed. The worst of the damage occurred in Bo, Bontheand Pujehundistricts. Because many households in Sierra Leone depend on agriculture for their food and income, the loss of crops and seeds devastated the food and nutrition security of farmers in these areas, who were already at the peak of the lean season. This project was implemented to immediately improve household food security while allowing farmers to restart agricultural production during [...]

During the period 2007–2017, the government’s main policies for the agricultural sector aimed at reinforcing support to farmers, strengthening disaster risk management and rehabilitating degraded pastures. The government increased non-contributory social assistance expenditure for categorically targeted programmes from 1.3 percent of GDP in 2008 to 2.2 percent in 2014 (higher than levels in Europe and Central Asia). Nevertheless, the performance of the social assistance system in terms of coverage, targeting accuracy and adequacy, remains a challenge. See all FAPDA country fact sheets.

New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues [...]

FAO promotes the use and scale up of Cash+ as a tool for emergency response, strengthening resilience and reducing rural poverty. The Cash+ model supports the enhancement of vibrant and diversified livelihoods, providing an important safety net against shocks and stresses for poor and vulnerable rural households. As such, the model has great transformative potential. Cash+ is a tool for quick-impact humanitarian response and recovery as well as serving as a component of long-term social protection and resilience programmes. FAO’s work on Cash+ is based on field experience and research, which show the potential of this tool to sustainably enhance the [...]

Since 2008, FAO has been at the forefront of efforts to measure resilience to food insecurity and has pioneered the development and use of the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) to understand the capacity of households to react to shocks. RIMA identifies vulnerable households and analyzes the underlying factors that contribute to their low resilience, while supporting decision-makers to develop evidence-based programs and policies to improve their resilience.

Based on governance dialogue seminar held at FAO in November 2017, the brief emphasizes that to effectively address the risk of protracted crises, it is critical to understand the governance and political economy of the prevailing contexts, the principal actors and their power dynamics, the impact of the crises and the nature of the support required. The political economy and conflict analyses can reveal the underlying or proximate causes of a crisis, inform conflict-sensitive programming and help bridge humanitarian and development intervention. The brief also discusses the relevance of investing in resilient agriculture-based interventions in protracted crises contexts.

The study summarizes the results emerging from the 2017 update of the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) indicators for the 2005-2016 period for 14 sub-Saharan African countries. These indicators - comparable across commodities, countries and years - are commonly used to assess the extent of policy support in agriculture. They measure the effect of trade and market policies and inefficiencies on the degree of price incentives faced by farmers in key commodity value chains, as well as the level and composition of public expenditures in support of the agriculture sector. Despite results being very heterogeneous across countries [...]

This FAO-IOM two-pager examines the nexus between agriculture, climate change and migration. It further showcases what we know to date and what are the gaps on agriculture, climate change, and migration nexus, for effective policy and technical intervention. Key policy processes and a framework for collaborative action among multiple stakeholders are suggested.

This introduction frames the entire series of guidance notes "Improving food security and nutrition in protracted crises – guidance to implement the CFS-FFA", providing background on protracted crises and the Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (CFS-FFA) and also presenting the objectives of the series. Protracted crises are situations in which a significant proportion of the population is acutely vulnerable to death, disease, and disruption of livelihoods o ver a prolonged period of time. Available in French.

The 2017 Near East and North Africa (NENA) edition of the Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition comes under the theme of “building resilience for food security and nutrition in times of conflict and crisis”. The report establishes a baseline against which to measure future progress towards achieving SDG 2 on ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in NENA by monitoring the latest indicators for the SDG targets on hunger and food insecurity (SDG Target 2.1) and malnutrition (SDG Target 2.2). Beyond numbers, the report focuses on the fundamental factors that have driven improvements in food security and malnutrition: poverty reduction, [...]