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WFP Sri Lanka Country Brief, January 2017

Countries
Sri Lanka
Sources
WFP
Publication date

Highlights

  • WFP’s Executive Director and the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka met at the World Economic Forum (Davos), with their discussion focused on this year’s foreseen severe drought in Sri Lanka.
  • Sri Lanka is preparing for serious difficulties this year in terms of food and nutrition insecurity until the main harvest in March/April 2018. The expected failure of the main harvest (Maha) season in March/April 2017 could be the worst main agricultural season in the last 40 years.
  • The National Strategic Review for Food Security and Nutrition towards Zero Hunger will be launched on 13 February by the President.

WFP Assistance

The objective of the Country Programme (CP) is to transition towards providing a more holistic support to the government’s efforts to address hunger and malnutrition and build resilience to climate-related shocks. The CP is implemented in partnership with government ministries, United Nations agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations and the private sector.

The CP aligns with the Government’s commitment to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 ‘Zero Hunger’ and the UN Development Assistance Framework cycle 2013-2017.

The goals of the CP are to:

  • Reduce undernutrition among children under 5 and pregnant and nursing women;
  • Increase food intake and school attendance among primary schoolchildren in food insecure areas;
  • Enhance vulnerable households’ resilience to shocks and facilitate adaptation to climate change; and
  • Increase government capacity to address food and nutrition insecurity.

Through the School Meals Programme, WFP provides nutritious mid-morning meals to 160,000 school children in the Northern Province, contributing to increased attendance and retention rates and improved learning performance.

WFP supports resilience building against climate shocks through adaptation measures to improve food and nutrition security for the shock-affected communities.

WFP also focuses on the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition through targeted supplementary feeding for children aged 6-59 months using Super Cereal Plus, a nutritious corn soya blend.

Other projects:

Scaling-Up Nutrition through a Multi Sector Approach: WFP and FAO support the Government in implementing its Multi-Sectoral Action Plan on Nutrition. The action plan includes nutrition baseline surveys, promoting food fortification including a rice pilot and policy formulation. The joint programme is funded by the Spanish Cooperation through the Sustainable Development Goal Fund (SDG-F).

WFP provides technical support to the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medicine to enhance the impact of Thriposha, a nutritious, locally fortified blended food (completion, production, supply chain)

Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) – People’s Forum: WFP supports the Government’s advocacy effort to promote nutrition for the first 1000 days of a child through the partnership with Save the Children and Civil Societies.

Through the Climate Change Adaptation Project, WFP is assisting 14,000 farming families in the Mahaweli River Basin, targeting 72 small tanks rehabilitation in 2017.

The Climate Adaptation Management and Innovation Initiative (C-ADAPT) aims to enhance food security among vulnerable subsistence lagoon fishermen and women’s groups through improved livelihoods in the least resilient communities.