Annual Country Report 2020: Afghanistan. Country Strategic Plan 2018-2022

Annual Country Report 2020: Afghanistan. Country Strategic Plan 2018-2022

Rome (Italy): World Food Programme, 2020.

English

74 p.

ELR1762

In 2020, WFP reached 9 million food-insecure people – four million more than the previous year – with food or cash assistance across Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Given the acute socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, WFP’s focus was on emergency life-saving activities, through which it reached over 7 million food-insecure people, up from 4.3 million beneficiaries reached in 2019. Unconditional life-saving assistance was prioritized for people facing emergency or crisis levels of acute food insecurity and households acutely affected by the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19. WFP’s assistance emphasized cash-based support to persons acutely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in urban areas while continuing to provide in-kind assistance to severely food-insecure populations in rural areas. Given the escalation of violence and increased levels of mass displacement across the country, WFP increased time-critical assistance to forcefully displaced populations, reaching 337,000 internally displaced persons affected by conflict. Despite the growing food insecurity needs and logistics challenges throughout 2020, WFP maintained a strategic shift towards more sustainable solutions, assisting 354,000 beneficiaries through resilient livelihoods activities. . Despite the challenges represented by the COVID-19 movement restrictions and associated shutdown of borders and schools, WFP reached 1.3 million children, pregnant and lactating women, and schoolgirls and boys through its prevention and treatment of malnutrition and school feeding programmes. WFP continued to strengthen food systems by providing technical support and agricultural inputs to 38 flour mills strategically located in six provinces across the country. WFP-supported mills produced 150,000 mt of wheat flour fortified with micronutrients, to improve the availability of nutritious food. Of these, WFP procured 90,000 mt for its operations and o strengthened wheat and soya value chains through agricultural inputs and trainings to 9,100 smallholder farmers.

ELR 1762

eng

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