Emergency Food Security Interventions

This Good Practice Review explores programming practices in emergency food

security. It is not intended to be a guide or a ‘how-to’ manual. It is fairly brief,

offering an overview and suggestions for where to dig deeper: it is not

intended as a reference encyclopaedia. The objective of this review is to

provide a concise overview of conceptual issues and analytical and planning

approaches, together with state-of-the-art programming practices in

interventions designed to protect the food security of disaster- or crisisaffected

groups.Along with a brief description of the intervention, itsapplication, management and monitoring, each chapter includes references to the best topic-specific overviews, tools and case studies currently available.

 

This review is intended primarily for humanitarian aid workers, managers and

staff, as well as government officials and donor agency personnel, whose task it

is to ensure that food security is protected in times of emergencies. It is

intended to provide aid workers with a full range of programmatic options and

the means to determine which are best suited to their circumstances. But the

review is also of wider relevance. First, it provides an introduction for students

and others not familiar with the topic. Second, ‘emergency food security’ is a

category of programming intervention that requires broad linkages – to both

pre- and post-crisis programming interventions, as well as to other cross-cutting

strategies – if these programmes are to have any relevance beyond the saving

of human life in times of crisis. Saving lives, of course, remains the top priority

in acute emergencies – hence ‘emergency food security’ is a legitimate topic on

its own. But as most field workers intuitively know, in many contexts such

programmes have little impact unless linked to broader interventions and policy

changes. While much has been written on food security more broadly, this

review situates the emergency programming element in the context of the wider

debate on protecting people’s right to adequate food.