Emergency food security interventions are evolving. In the past few years new ideas have emerged for protecting the access of disaster – and crisis -affected people to adequate and nutritious food. Some old approaches remain relevant, but are sometimes not well understood.

This Good Practice Review explores programming practices in emergency food security. It provides 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 crisis – affected groups. Along with a brief description of the intervention, its application, 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. 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.

An event, hosted by the American Red Cross, was held in March 2009 to launch this Good Practice Review on emergency food security interventions. The lead authors, Daniel Maxwell and Kate Sadler from the Feinstein International Center, presented an overview of the publication and explained why it was important to pull together new and existing interventions in one place. They also described some of the programmatic options available to humanitarian practitioners and outlined the tools for determining which options to use in which circumstances. Brian Kriz from Save the Children was a panel member and Wendy Fenton, new Head of HPN, chaired the event.

 

 

 

 

Comments

Comments are available for logged in members only.