Countries

Overview

Tajikistan is a low-income, food-deficit country with a population of 6.6 million. The country has the highest rate of poverty of all the countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Nearly two-thirds of the country's population are classified as poor, living on less than US$2.15/ day, with some 76 percent of them living in rural areas.

The poorest groups of the population spend over 70 percent of their income on food. Around 10 percent of the rural population, or 1.4 million people, are estimated to be chronically food insecure and a further 17 percent very vulnerable to food insecurity.

WFP Activities

WFP operations aim to improve household food security, promote investment in human capital and preserve/ rehabilitate assets through recovery activities, including food for education, food for work, support to tuberculosis patients, and support to supplementary and therapeutic feeding programmes.

WFP also continues to provide relief food aid to the victims of natural disasters. Under WFP's current operation, some 858,987 people receive food assistance with 31,498 metric tons of food at an overall cost of US$28 million.

WFP activities include:

• Food for education provides hot meals to encourage primary school attendance in food-insecure districts with high drop-out rates. In areas where there is a higher gender gap, take-home rations are provided to secondary-grade girls.
• Support to malnourished children, pregnant and lactating women and tuberculosis patients: Acutely malnourished children are being treated through Therapeutic and Supplementary-feeding programmes. WFP also assists food-insecure households. TB patients receive family food rations as an incentive to continue the DOTS treatment.
• Food for work targets able-bodied men and women, with a special focus on water supply, community asset rehabilitation and disaster mitigation. The new Tajikistan operation includes a handover strategy that will focus on a transitioning of key activities from WFP to the Government. The strategy is currently being discussed between WFP and the relevant Government ministries. Over the past two years, the Tajikistan operation has suffered from declining resources and a number of traditional, emerging and potential donors have been approached for further support. Additional contributions are required to ensure that the project funds are sufficient to meet needs throughout 2008.
• Vulnerable Group Feeding WFP gives a two- to three-month basic ration (wheat flour, vegetable oil, salt and pulses) to the most destitute families at two times of the year -- the lean season (April/May) before the summer harvest and the pre-winter months of November and December. Without this assistance, the families would be forced to resort to begging and selling their assets.