Uniting on Food Assistance

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Executive summary

The global problem of hunger and malnutrition shows no signs of abating. Around the world, 925 million people – more than the populations of the European Union and the United States combined – are currently undernourished. At least double that number suffer from insufficient intake of crucial micronutrients such as iodine, iron, vitamin A and zinc. Year by year, conflicts, natural disasters and rising food prices keep pushing millions into hunger and poverty.

Combating hunger and food insecurity requires a comprehensive approach. Chronic food insecurity needs long-term development strategies. Acute hunger and undernutrition at the same time need lifesaving food assistance – the focus of this paper.

Food assistance policies and operational practices have seen considerable innovation in the last decade. Despite this progress, food assistance still falls short of its potential to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of the acutely malnourished. Some of these shortfalls can be overcome through improved cooperation and coordination between the main food assistance donors, the European Commission and the United States, and through convergence among the major donors and operational agencies around innovative practices.

Current challenges

• Food assistance faces a series of challenges that must be addressed in the near future. The main issues are:
• Outdated international governance mechanisms that do not support current innovations in food assistance much less facilitate further progress
• Gaps in needs-based food assistance where recipient needs and humanitarian responses do not match
• Insufficient linkage between humanitarian assistance and development assistance, seen in the continuing difficulties in pursuing a twin-track approach to food security

A call for transatlantic action

The transatlantic partners need to take the lead in addressing these challenges. The European Commission, the EU member states and the US government together provide more than 65% of global food assistance. Moreover, their policies and actions considerably shape norms, policies and practices in food assistance worldwide. The European Commission and the US government therefore have the means to drive change, especially if they work in partnership with emerging donors, operational agencies and recipients of food assistance.

The European Commission and the US government also have before them important opportunities for working together more closely. Despite frequent misunderstandings, they have increasingly converged their approaches to food assistance. Both donors now employ more intensive needs assessment and response analysis methods to allocate scarce resources. They are looking more carefully at the nutritional content and impact of their assistance. And they are using more cash- and voucherbased assistance, as well as local and regional food purchases in lieu of tied, transoceanic shipments. This growing coherence should enable the transatlantic partners to jointly tackle the challenges outlined above.

Recommendations

We offer the following recommendations to the European Commission and the US government:

1. Reform the outdated Food Aid Convention
2. Close the FAO Consultative Sub-committee on Surplus Disposal
3. Agree on definitions of emergency food aid in the WTO negotiations
4. Improve information gathering and its use to provide context-specific food assistance
5. Invest in capacity building to improve the quality of data collection and analysis
6. Make response analysis an essential part of any food assistance intervention
7. Develop joint strategies to combine response options appropriately
8. Engage in strategic dialogue and policy convergence on nutrition and food safety
9. Identify quality-quantity tradeoffs and the nutritional impacts of different tools
10. Harmonize standards to ensure food assistance quality and safety
11. Support the new UN Global Food Security Cluster
12. Ensure greater coordination within and among European and U.S. programs
13. Initiate an external review of UN agency food security functions and coordination
14. Enhance food assistance cooperation between the European Commission and the US
15. Improve administrative coherence within the EU and the US

The European Commission and the US government should push for progress on these 15 points, in cooperation with other donors, operational agencies and recipients. Such reform will advance the international community’s ability to respond effectively to the food crises that will unfortunately continue to threaten vulnerable populations in the developing world for the foreseeable future.

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