Mapping food crisis (mapping hunger)

Food security is a complex issue that I do not intend to discuss here in full. Here I just want to mention some of the current tools used in assessing, forecasting and classifying the severity of food  insecurity. Accurate information and interpretation is vital to try to make better decisions on where and when to intervene.

Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSnet) is a network and website that provides evidence-based analysis to help government decision-makers and relief agencies plan for and respond to humanitarian crises. It’s built from a network of partners, ranging from collaborators in data collection and analysis to the same NGOs that use it. The website includes monthly reports and maps detailing current and projected food insecurity, alerts on emerging or likely crises. It also provides specialized reports on weather and climate, markets and trade, agricultural production, livelihoods, nutrition, and food assistance.

Used to describe food emergency level of severity, the IPC 2.0 Integrated Food security phase Classification is widely accepted by the international community. Based on common standards and language, this five-level scale is intended to help governments and other humanitarian actors quickly understand a crisis – or a potential one – and take action. Of course situations need to be checked locally as scenarios change suddenly and local specificity and organizations’ goals too. Unfortunately this is not always possible because of safety issues or logistics capacity.

Surveys and situation assessments take time, require a great amount of human and technological resources and the site has an enormous amount of information at different levels. This is why FEWSnet has great influence in where most efforts go to in emergency response interventions and even in long-term food security projects.

Surveys, assessments and forecasts are only a small part of this current food insecurity response system. Policies in organizations like FAO, WHO or governments’ relief programs interests, and international politics are much involved in declaring or not a food emergency. Affected countries may decide it’s not good publicity to declare itself under famine. At times involving armed internal conflict or for other political reasons there is no interest in having foreign organizations in the country. Other countries appealing to their sovereign right want to deal or not deal with food security emergency their own way.

On a positive note, organizations do have guiding principles for response to food security and nutrition crisis, and these are constantly being reviewed. For reference the Minimum Standards Sphere Project handbook is a statement of established legal rights and obligations and of shared beliefs and commitments of humanitarian agencies, all collected in a set of common principles, rights and duties.

To make it clear food security crisis is usually an euphemism for hunger and this is a whole other story: How badly we explain about hunger and its real causes and all the political decisions that are a direct cause. Please visit FAM Project for more on this issue, because hunger is politics.