Vulnerability to hunger: improving food crisis responses in fragile states

This paper examines the imperative for improved classification and analysis of food crises in different fragile contexts. Recognising the persistence and protracted nature of food crises, the paper questions how prevention and response mechanisms could be improved to help decisionmakers better address the underlying causes of vulnerability and hunger. In particular, the paper considers the potential of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system to achieve a more systematic and comparable analysis.

The paper begins by looking at vulnerability to hunger and the challenges raised by the increasing number of food crises, particularly in the African context. It highlights a number of operational bottlenecks that decisionmakers face in addressing food crisis situations.

Drawing on case study information, it then examines opportunities and constraints in applying a recently developed food security IPC system. Developed originally in Somalia, this classification framework is now being applied in a range of country contexts within and outside of Africa to provide a comparable situation analysis based upon technical consensus.

The authors examine emerging lessons from this common classification framework, covering institutional adaptation, technical approaches and questions on data and analysis.

Main conclusions and recommendations include:

• there is a need for more systematic analysis to enable more appropriate responses to crises
  
• the IPC is am important mechanism for promoting more comparable and transparent analysis with the aim of ensuring more strategic, timely and needs based response
  
• national buy-in in the analysis of food security and vulnerability matters is of key importance and institutional aspects within a country need to be considered to ensure ownership and transparency of approach
  
• the value added of the IPC is to bring consistency to the early stages of analysis particularly through the separation of situation from response analysis
  
• from the vulnerability perspective, the IPC helps to illustrate underlying elements of vulnerability and to determine the potential severity and magnitude of a crisis event, with the early warning providing a valuable signal on future vulnerability patterns.