Transition: Towards Resilient and Food-Secure Pakistan

This operation has been modified as per budget revision 4 (see below)

In recent years, Pakistan has advanced a wide range of policies and programmes that have created new transformational opportunities to ensure Pakistan’s growth, including achievements in prioritizing and addressing food insecurity and malnutrition. WFP’s proposed three-year transitional project1 is designed with the aim of ensuring that the Government’s plans and successes are supported.

In 2014, to respond to the new global and regional context, the Government produced Vision 2025, the roadmap for developing Pakistan’s human and social capital, focusing on public service delivery, productivity, innovation and addressing the food insecurity and poverty. At the same time, as Pakistan continues to grow, a number of complex, interconnected challenges face the country, creating needs among the most vulnerable parts of the population and impacting the Government’s ability to achieve its development agenda: vulnerability to frequently occurring, large-scale natural disasters; ongoing law and order operations in the northwest to combat militancy; temporary population displacement; and acute and chronic malnutrition in parts of the country. Set against this, WFP will continue to respond to the Government’s request for collaboration as it shapes its response to these complex challenges, while assisting the most vulnerable people.

This transitional project situates WFP alongside Government priorities, working in partnership to ensure the success of Government-led efforts to improve food security and nutrition among communities affected by law and order operations and the effects of recurring climatic events; build resilience among communities in the most hazard-prone parts of the country; address malnutrition; and support an enabling environment for women to increase their social and economic equality. The operation positions WFP to work with the Government to support the voluntary return of the displaced in the northwest, as well as those still in displacement, until mid-2017.2 The project will provide the flexibility to continue WFP’s capability enhancement activities to prepare for and respond to future shocks, to transition to more technical support and recovery work, while also maintaining its unique ability to respond quickly and effectively, and prioritize relief or recovery windows. Through this transitional three-year period, the operation will ensure WFP’s support to recovery needs is achieved through a comprehensive and integrated approach at provincial and federal levels and aligned with Vision 2025.

This transitional project will employ a range of strategic, locally relevant unconditional and conditional food and cash-based assistance. Locally produced, specialized nutritious foods will be used to prevent and treat malnutrition among pregnant and lactating women and children 6–59 months. Assistance will be targeted and focused in areas where food insecurity and low socio-economic indicators coincide, in hazard-prone districts, with high levels of malnutrition and where further integration of interventions with the Government, civil society and the United Nations can be strengthened.

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The fourth revision to Pakistan’s PRRO 200867 proposes the following changes: WFP will provide an additional 12,359 mt of food to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and newly returned households; the expansion of the Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) programme in four districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province to include Afghan refugees and host communities; the provision of 144 mt of dates contributed by the Government of Saudi Arabia to the beneficiaries of Relief component.