Food Security Coverage

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 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..

Policy support: WFP, with other organizations including FAO and UNICEF and the national Zero Hunger programme, provides policy level support to the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFSR) in drafting a national food security and nutrition policy initiative to improve food security and nutrition, conducting policy level food security and poverty alleviation workshops and interactions at both national and provincial levels and providing human resource capacity building. At the request of MNFSR, a new nationwide Food Security Assessment is being conducted in partnership with FAO, UNICEF and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute to provide a comprehensive analysis of the current food and nutrition security situation in Pakistan.