Chronic Food Insecurity

The IPC Prototype for Analyzing Chronic Food Insecurity

While the IPC was originally developed in a complex emergency context, its expanded usage is often in non-crisis and developmental contexts. This has provoked demand for clearer explanation of how it is relevant in these contexts.

Chronic Pilot Test in Nepal, Sept.2012

The IPC Technical Manual Version 2.0 separates severity scales for chronic and acute/transitory food insecurity. New reference table and procedures are introduced to analyze Chronic Food Insecurity and complement analysis of Acute Food Insecurity. In this way, situations not in crisis could still be classified according to their levels of chronic food insecurity (as determined by rates of stunting, recurrence of crisis, and vulnerability indicators such as poverty and others). This will help to inform intervention design with medium and longer term strategic objectives that address underlying and structural causes of food insecurity.

Indeed, the IPC chronic food insecurity scale would likely only be updated every few years, and would inform more developmentally oriented food security interventions such as Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), micro-nutrient support, livelihood diversification, etc. At times of acute crisis, the IPC chronic food insecurity analysis could be combined with the IPC acute food insecurity results to show the differences between areas that are acute but not also chronic, and acute but also chronic. The two are not mutually exclusive and both understandings are important for comprehensive responses to end food insecurity.

IPC Chronic Pilot - Country Exercises

A number of countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia have embarked on the IPC Chronic Pilot Exercise to test the IPC Chronic Food Insecurity scale and tools introduced by the version 2.0 of the IPC manual.

The IPC Chronic Pilot Exercise is carried out through two main events:

1. The Chronic Food Insecurity (CFI) Training to introduce the IPC prototype chronic food insecurity tools: analytical framework, reference table and analysis templates. The Training is followed by:
2. The Chronic Food Insecurity (CFI) Analysis Workshop to apply these tools by analyzing the chronic food security situation in a specific area/province and developing the IPC Chronic Food Insecurity Map. This analysis exercise is not meant to reflect actual analysis for decision support as much as they are meant to test the tools only.

The overall objective of the IPC Chronic Pilot Exercises is to get feedback and lessons learned from countries for further development and refinement of the prototype system for classifying chronic food insecurity.

The IPC Global Chronic Working Group

The IPC Global “Chronic Working Group” was formed on October 2012 to engage the most relevant organizations and institutions acting in both emergency and development contexts in piloting the IPC tools for classifying chronic food insecurity and reviewing the results also considering new and innovative approaches.

The ultimate objective of the IPC Chronic Working Group is to develop a final model for classifying chronic food insecurity using the basic characteristics of the IPC approach.

As of today the membership of the IPC Global Chronic Working Group” is composed of the IPC Global Partners and agencies as FANTA, ICF International, IFPRI, and the World Bank. Country, Regional as well as donor institutions are also involved.