Highlights
WFP continues to provide food and nutritional assistance to vulnerable people in Afghanistan. However, as a result of funding shortfall, WFP could not provide food to 224,000 vulnerable people and cash-based transfers to 277,000, as lean season support in January and February respectively.
Afghanistan is facing an unprecedented influx of returnees, and an increased level of insecurity causing sporadic and unpredictable bursts of displacement. Without the valuable support of our donors, WFP may eventually reduce our footprint in Afghanistan. WFP urgently needs USD 66.3 million to provide planned programme assistance to internally displaced persons, malnourished children, nursing mothers, schoolchildren and support people under its disaster reduction activities.
Operational Updates
The WFP Strategic Review was officially launched in late November by HE Hedayat Amin Arsala at the first Advisory Committee Meeting which was held at the Presidential Palace. Since then there have been three meetings of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) who is supporting the research team with information and also guiding the methodology. The first TAG meeting was hosted by the Deputy Minister of Economy while the others were hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and also FAO. The Aide Memoire is expected in March and will be presented to the Advisory Committee for review/comments.
In March 2017, the WFP protection and accountability to affected populations (AAP) advisor will be undertaking a context and protection analysis to support the country office in adapting programming and response activities to mitigate identified protection and APP concerns, including the overall humanitarian response to Afghan returnees, and ensuring that communication to and from the people assisted is appropriate and addresses information gaps. In addition, the adivisor will be supporting contextualized messaging on the roll-out of SCOPE and identifying protection-related concerns emerging from the registration of beneficiaries, management of data and delivery of data and SCOPE cards.
Due to the suspension of refugee returns to Afghanistan until the beginning of the second quarter of 2017, WFP’s Emergency Operation is expecting to scale up its support to vulnerable returnees from April onwards. In the interim period, WFP is setting the foundation of SCOPE, the corporate beneficiary and transfer management platform, through a series of consultations and trainings. In Afghanistan, WFP is currently implementing SCOPE for its emergency operation for the migration crisis and plans to scale-up to support all WFP operations in the country.
SCOPE is implemented to support Government Ministries, so they can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of social safety nets in the country.Under its local procurement of fortified wheat flour, WFP Afghanistan purchased 66,055 mt of fortified wheat flour in 2016. These local purchases, involving 26 large commercial flour mills, has boosted WFP’s timely emergency response, and stimulates the local economy. Flour fortification is one of the most effective methods of supplementing poor diet at the household level. The fortification of wheat flour is part of WFP’s wider intervention in Afghanistan to reduce multiple micronutrient deficiencies amongst the vulnerable population.