Annual Country Report 2020: Armenia. Country Strategic Plan 2019-2024

Rome (Italy): World Food Programme, 2020.

English

45 p.

ELR-1771

While 2020 was a particularly challenging year for Armenia, it also proved WFP's ability to rapidly adapt and respond to a fast-paced, changing environment. Key events affecting WFP’s work involved adapting the school feeding programme to the impact of COVID-19. For the first time after three decades, WFP also provided food assistance across Armenia to the most vulnerable affected first by the pandemic and later by the conflict in the adjoining region of Nagorno-Karabakh. In total, WFP doubled its support, compared to 2019, reaching around 130,000 beneficiaries, distributing almost 2,000 mt of food and transferring approximately USD 600,000 to those most in need. WFP also delivered in the country more than 125,000 units of life-saving medical and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The year 2020 demonstrated how WFP development-oriented interventions such as school feeding and food system support proved to be resilient to shocks continuing uninterrupted despite the many challenges. WFP’s development operations also acted as buffers to shocks, alleviating the impacts on food security and poverty of affected populations. As part of the school feeding programme's nationalisation, WFP supported the Government to renovate school kitchens and canteens. Upon completion of renovation works WFP provides the schools with the full set of kitchen equipment to enable schools to prepare hot, diversified and nutritious meals and to insure programme’s sustainability for upcoming years. In 2020 alone, 92 schools were rehabilitated. WFP supported the Government with general food assistance in the form of in-kind food rations covering family’s basic food needs to 10,400 highly vulnerable people, while responding to the health emergency with the provision of life-saving medical and personal protective equipment. From 27 September, when tensions in the adjoining region of Nagorno-Karabakh escalated, WFP Armenia worked to support spontaneous arrivals with food assistance. Dry food rations were supplied to 11,000 individuals in urgent need inside Armenia for two months.

Electronic ed.

ELR 1771

eng

MON-127341