Food insecurity, poverty and HIV are profoundly interrelated in Lesotho. The past decade has seen a decline of nearly all human index indicators due to this negative synergy. Food security largely depends on households’ purchasing power as fewer than 5 percent of households produce enough food for their families1 even in normal times.
The current situation of food insecurity has been caused by three shocks to real incomes unemployment, an increase in the price of staple foods, and the HIV and AIDS pandemic.
In this PRRO, WFP seeks to help households mitigate the impact of this destructive cycle through a social protection approach that combines relief and recovery activities. The PRRO will not only address the short-term food needs of vulnerable groups, such as HIV and AIDS, and TB patients undergoing treatment, mothers in Mother and Child Health (MCH) treatment programmes, malnourished children under five and Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), but will also their promote livelihood recovery through food for work/assets programmes and sustainable livelihoods projects.
The focus will be on ensuring that food and nutrition programming form an integral part of national HIV-AIDS and social safety-net policies, with the prospect of WFP-assisted target groups benefiting from these schemes beyond 2010. The proposed PRRO is consistent with priorities outlined in the Government of Lesotho’s (GoL) Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS); the National AIDS Strategic Plan (NASP) and the Food Security Policy Action Plan.
The PRRO supports WFP’s Strategic Objective 2: rotect livelihoods in crisis situations and enhance resilience to shocks and Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) 1 & 7; Strategic Objective 3: Support the improved nutrition and health status of children, mothers and other vulnerable people and MDGs 4, 5 and 6; Strategic Objective 4: Support access to education and reduce gender disparity in access to education and skills training and MDGs 2 and 3; and Strategic Objective 5: Strengthen the capacities of countries and regions to establish and manage food assistance and hunger reduction programmes and MDGs 1 – 6.
