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The Special Programme for Food Security (PESA) is one initiative of the FAO Integrated Food Security Support Service in Central America.
The objectives are to:

• Develop capacities of regional, national and local institutions and stakeholders in formulating, monitoring and evaluating programmes for food and nutrition security;
• Provide technical assistance in support of national and regional programmes for food and nutrition security; and
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and communication of lessons learned from implementing programmes for food and nutrition security.

The project supports PESA and its objectives at regional and national levels.

At the regional level the objective is to identify and analyze lessons learned from the experiences of PESA Central America from a right to food approach. At national level the aim is to strengthen the technical assistance of FAO in food security and nutrition through improved knowledge on human rights approaches.

The project prepares training courses tailored for PESA Country Directors, technicians and partners to build capacity on the practical implementation of the right to food at national, sub-national and project levels in PESA countries. The training programme and exchange of experiences on the right to food will be used to extract lessons, which can demonstrate the high relevance of a rights-based approach in order to share these experiences with other regions.

In close collaboration with the Hunger-Free Latin America and the Caribbean Initiative (IALCSH), the FAO Representations in Central America and the National Directors of PESA, the project is making an assessment of the special programmes for food security at national level.

The assessment serves two purposes:

• to understand to what extend the actual design of the field implementation of the programmes conforms with the human rights based approach;
• to identify the design elements and/or the implementation practices that could be modified in order to strengthen their impact on the realization of the human rights, especially the right to food.