In 2018, some 113 million people in 53 countries suffered from acute hunger. That is 113 million girls, boys, men and women, old and young, who were unable to access enough food and required humanitarian assistance. For the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), building resilient agriculture-based livelihoods and food systems is at the core of its efforts to fight acute hunger and avert food crises.
This publication offers stakeholders an opportunity to reflect on some of FAO's achievements over the past year and identify how it can do better in the future. The report is not an exhaustive list of all of FAO’s resilience work, but rather an overview of what it can achieve and how much more there is to be done.
In 2018, with considerable support from the European Union, the FAO moved ahead in operationalizing the Global Network Against Food Crises, which focuses on preventing and addressing crises, bringing together actors across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus and recognizing that it is only by tackling the root causes of hunger that food crises are averted in the future. In addition, greater investment in multi-year resilience programmes is critical. In 2018, the FAO saw significant progress in developing and implementing such programmes, but they must become the norm and not the exception. Unless stakeholders invest at scale in building resilience – beyond a handful of projects that target 20 000 people here, 100 000 people there – there will not be significant gains in reducing acute hunger.
This report covers FAO's work in:
- Anticipating and preparing for crises
- Responding fast to crises
- Reducing risks and addressing vulnerabilities.
Finally, the report outlines FAO's plans for stakeholder cooperation in 2019.