EMERGENCY OR DEVELOPMENT… NOT JUST NUMBERS

VAM activities aim to assess the food security and vulnerability situation in a country before, during and after a crisis; they also provide a framework for continually assessing the food security and vulnerability status of WFP beneficiaries.

For emergencies as well as for development programmes, WFP needs to know not only the number of food insecure people but also who they are, where they live and how they could benefit from food aid.

However, to provide an effective long-term response to acute hunger, WFP needs more detailed information on the hungry: to what degree are they food insecure, why and for how long, and how best can the Agency use food aid to improve their situation.

VAM provides all this information.

VAM's CONTRIBUTION TO WFP EMERGENCY PROGRAMMING

• Before the crisis: baseline vulnerability and food security assessments feed vital information into WFP's disaster mitigation and contingency planning.
  
  They detail the risks faced by different population groups, the likely impact of a natural or man-made disaster and individual families' capacity to cope.
  
  By continually monitoring food security situation, VAM activities can also help WFP to identify emerging trends and eventual threats to households who risk becoming food insecure.
  
  
• During the crisis: In the initial stages of an emergency, there is an urgent need for information about the quantity of emergency aid needed. Standard WFP emergency needs assessments help answer this question.
  
  After initial emergency assessments are completed, there is an opportunity to develop more systematic profiles using an Emergency Vulnerability Analysis.
  
  This helps to better target beneficiaries, identifying when food aid is needed, for how long, and the most appropriate means for distributing it.
  
  
• After the crisis: Vulnerability Monitoring helps WFP shift the focus of its operations from relief to recovery by detecting changes in the food security conditions of beneficiaries receiving emergency food aid.

VAM's VALUE-ADDED TO WFP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMING

WFP's Enabling Development policy, launched in 1999, sought to raise the quality of the Agency's development projects through better targeting, assessment and monitoring of food aid.

It also emphasised the strengthening of WFP's capacity to manage the transition of an emergency from relief to recovery and eventually to long-term development, including prevention and preparedness.

VAM was charged with finding better assessment methods to:

• confirm the presence of food insecurity and hunger in targeted areas
  
  
• identify where food aid is the best solution to dealing with the difficulties faced by vulnerable populations
  
  
• identify opportunities to use food aid to assist health, education, asset-creation, disaster mitigation and natural resource management

The Standard Analytical Framework (SAF) is a response developed by VAM to answer all WFP's information needs on the hungry poor at all stages of programming and help the Agency choose the right food aid strategy.