SCN Meeting on How Emergency Food Aid Works

A recent ACC/SCN working group meeting in Oslo brought together nutritionists with an extensive experience of emergency programmes, representatives from donor governments responsible for, or with knowledge of, emergency food resource mobilisation and resource mobilisers from the ICRC and WFP.

The principal aims of the meeting were:

* to represent the field perspective about the types of nutritional problems that occur during these programmes and their perception of how and why these problems occur

* to represent donor perspective on how emergency food aid provision works, in order to better inform nutritionists and field personnel about the process and potential bottlenecks

* to begin the process of identifying whether there is room for manoeuvre, to improve the nutritional impact of emergency food assistance by facilitating the exchange of information between those working on the food and nutritional security aspects of emergency food assistance and those involved with the institutional arrangements, for providing emergency food assistance at donor and multilateral agency level, i.e. ICRC and WFP

Factors identified at the meeting which contributed to inadequate emergency general ration provision fell into the following categories;

* conflict related factors, e.g. insecurity
* inadequate ration planning
* national and international policies and regulations which influence food aid provision, e.g. The Food Aid Convention
* donor and multilateral food aid practices, procedures and institutional mechanisms which influence food aid provision, e.g. tying of food aid purchase
* institutional thinking, e.g. the need to discourage reliance in protracted emergency programmes by reducing rations
* political forces, e.g. strategic interests of donors influencing allocations

It was recognised that this meeting would, at best be the start of a process of dialogue between these two, often disparate communities, and that another objective of the meeting would be to identify other initiatives which could build upon the process of information exchange.

The meeting confirmed the huge gulf in information between these two communities and the need to establish fora and mechanisms, to ensure continued dialogue and interactive policy development in this area. A paper commissioned by DANIDA, to follow on the initiative started at this meeting has been drafted and will be summarised in the next Field Exchange.

Proceedings of the SCN meeting can be obtained from Jane Wallace RNIS Co-ordinator, ACC/SCN, c/o World Health Organisation, 20 Avenue Appia, 1211, Geneva 27, Switzerland, Tel: 41 22 791 0456. Fax: 41 22.798.88.91. e-mail: accscn@who.ch