World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Three and half million people in Nepal are considered to be moderately to severely food insecure and 41% of the population is estimated to be undernourished. Vulnerability to food insecurity and under-nutrition is the result of chronic, transitory and seasonal factors. Chronic factors include weak agricultural growth coupled with strong population growth, high rates of chronic poverty, geographical isolation of much of the poorest population, and chronic utilisation problems such as inadequate access to health services, water and sanitation. The malnutrition situation in Nepal is of serious concern. Half of Nepal’s children under 5 years are stunted or chronically undernourished. For the same population, acute malnutrition rates are at 13 percent. Hidden in this national average are extreme variations, and in many communities acute malnutrition rates exceed 15 percent—the emergency threshold. Malnutrition threatens millions of children with debilitating and irreversible mental and physical impairments.

Nepal’s recent decade long civil conflict significantly impaired economic development, and in recent years the complex interactions of these factors have been compounded by a  succession of food security shocks, including:
1. a protracted peace process and continued political instability;
2. two years of steep and sustained food price inflation; and
3. a succession of natural disasters including a series of severe droughts coupled with incidences of flooding.                                                                       

WFP’s strategic priorities in Nepal are to support the country’s protracted peace and recovery process by reducing hunger and undernutrition, fostering increased resilience amongst vulnerable communities, and providing humanitarian response to and preparing for increased environmental disasters.WFP’s work in Nepal primarily targets the most food insecure and hard to reach districts of the Mid and Far Western Hills and Mountains. These areas of Nepal experience both the greatest need for assistance and the greatest gap in government and development partner support.                                                                                                                                

The bulk of WFP's assistance is provided through a protracted relief and recovery operation that aims to target 1.2 million people in 2011 through food and/or cash for work activities. WFP’s food/cash-for-assets (F/CFA) programme supports communities to develop resources and enterprises aimed at reducing hunger while meeting immediate household food needs. Through the programme, beneficiaries are engaged in projects such as building irrigation systems, fishery ponds, cash crop cultivation and enhanced farming infrastructure. WFP also provides 205,000 Nepalese children with a mid-day school meal, provides oil to 62,000 Nepalese families that keep their girls in school and will provide mother child health care to 37,000 women and children in 2011. WFP Nepal also supports over 70,000 Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal.