Responding to Emergency Food Security Needs in Farah  Nimroz Provinces In 2018, Afghanistan recorded the highest level of violence since the 1990s, with an estimated 25,000 people killed as a result of conflict – a toll greater than Syria the same year.  Throughout 2019, Afghanistan has continued to face even more violence due to September’s presidential elections, recently suspended US-Taliban talks, and a potential fragmentation of the conflict between non-state armed groups (Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan) in its eastern region. Political uncertainty continues to take a major toll on civilians, and 17 million people – about half of Afghanistan’s population – already live in areas affected by conflict. 

According to FEWSNET’s June 2019 to January 2020 Food Security Outlook, many households will continue to face Crisis/IPC Phase 3 outcomes throughout the remainder of 2019 and into 2020, and there is an urgent need to expand access to emergency livelihoods support, particularly in the conflict-affected areas of western Afghanistan which have been hit by drought in 2018, and subsequently were impacted by flooding earlier in 2019. RI’s proposed program will provide agricultural assistance and basic training to 85,400 people in Farah and Nimroz, targeting eight districts prioritized by Food Security partners due to poor production outlooks in 2019 and 2020.

The districts proposed under the AHF reserve allocation (Anardara, Farah, Qala-i-Kah, and Shibkok in Farah and Chakhansur, Kang, Khashrod, and Zaranj in Nimroz) face both food security and nutrition needs. The four districts RI proposes to support under the AHF reserve in Farah were not only prioritized by the FSAC and among OCHA’s 100 hard-to-reach districts, but they have concerning levels of malnutrition and were classified as facing a critical emergency nutrition situation by the Nutrition Cluster. The GAM throughout Farah province is 9.5%. There is low coverage of SAM reported in five districts of Farah province (Bakwah, Khakisafed, Gulistan, Pushte- Road and Sheikh districts) which is mainly due to a remote, scattered population in combination with active fighting in hard to reach districts which prevent patients - mainly under five children and PLW suffering - from traveling and accessing HFs throughout these districts. Similarly, in Nimroz, prevalence fell between 5%-9.9% and was classified as ‘poor’ according to data from the most recent SMART survey, which was conducted in 2017 (Nutrition Cluster Annual Report 2017 ACF Nutrition Assessment Synthesis, 2019). Although the nutrition situation in Nimroz was found to be less severe than other provinces surveyed, the Nutrition Cluster identified Nimroz as a high priority through its bottleneck analysis conducted in the same year. This was mainly due to gaps in supply chain poor scale-up of integrated management of acute malnutrition (IMAM) activities limited outreach and community coverage and lack of quality consultations at the static health facility level due to a limited number of dedicated nutrition staff and high admission rates. 

RI’s food security and agriculture response under the AHF reserve has been informed by these gaps and aims to save lives in areas of highest need by providing timely agricultural inputs that enable vulnerable households to start production. Training activities will be carried out to strengthen livelihoods and enhance production capacities. Finally, as a health and nutrition provider in the same areas, RI will ensure to maximize integration across these sectors with food security and agriculture activities whenever possible.