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07 March 2011
GPPi releases recommendations for reforming the Food Aid Convention
In March 2011 GPPi published a policy brief that provides recommendations for modernizing the Food Aid Convention to support better emergency relief and recovery and to advance long term food security goals. Titled How to Reform the Outdated Food Aid Convention, the paper was written jointly by GPPi’s Alexander Gaus, Julia Steets and Andrea Binder and by Cornell University’s Christopher B. Barrett and Erin C. Lentz.
With food prices now soaring, the authors argue that the Food Aid Convention (FAC) needs urgent reform. The convention remains rooted in an outdated surplus disposal paradigm and favors responses that neither follow from careful evaluation of recipients’ needs nor reflect recent innovations in food assistance. The authors stress that in order to overcome such deficiencies, governments should seize the opportunity of the upcoming renegotiations to revamp the FAC and agree on a wider range of tools for both new food assistance methods and recovery activities. Their recommendations include:
- Focusing the FAC on emergency contexts
- Counting cash and voucher transfers
- Dropping restrictions on fortified foods and special nutritional products
- Including rehabilitation and recovery activities
- Shifting to cash-based, inflation-adjusted accounting
- Strengthening the convention’s governance arrangements
The policy brief is part of the GPPi project Uniting on Food Assistance, conducted jointly by GPPi and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. The project is funded by the European Union.
For more information, please contact Alexander Gaus.