ReliefWeb

Summary

Throughout 2019 in Iraq, WFP continued to work to meet the needs of vulnerable people, across the context of the humanitarian, development and peace nexus. WFP distributed food and cash-based assistance to displaced persons and refugees in camps, helped people rebuild their lives through work and training opportunities, and provided healthy meals to children in schools. In 2019, the last year of the Transitional Interim Country Strategic Plan, WFP reached 711,639 people, 85 percent of the planned total.

Iraq remains a challenging environment for humanitarian organizations. From August, camp consolidations, closures and relocations affected around 85,400 internally displaced persons (IDPs). From October, violence in northeast Syria caused over 19,000 refugees to flee to Iraq. Civil unrest during the fourth quarter led to delays in food and cash-based assistance. WFP remained agile and met the monthly food requirements for 457,180 IDPs in camps, and provided ready-to-eat food packages to families displaced for the first or second time. Of the 42,476 refugees who WFP supported in the Kurdistan Region, over 17,000 were new arrivals from northeast Syria.

To better meet people’s needs, WFP worked to transition from food to cash-based transfers (CBT). Targeting exercises helped prioritise the most vulnerable people for WFP's support.

Work opportunities for IDPs who return home from camps remain crucial. To help recovery and foster livelihoods, WFP scaled up its resilience programme, reaching 70,872 returnees, and indirectly some 126,000 people in the communities.
Such initiatives gave returnees the chance to earn a living, or the wider communities to restart agricultural livelihoods, removing barriers such as damaged irrigation systems. Communities who had never worked together before, or mistrusted each other, worked together successfully for the common good. WFP signed a Memorandum of Understanding with FAO to further coordinate on livelihood programming. Both organizations continued co-leading the Food Security Cluster.

In its third year, WFP’s pioneering "EMPACT-Empowerment in Action" training programme reached 13,665 people. In June, EMPACT was selected by the No Lost Generation Tech Summit in Jordan as an innovative solution for enhancing employment opportunities, through the development of digital and English language skills. WFP allocated nearly half of all places on livelihood projects to women.
In December, WFP recommenced the School Feeding Programme, in partnership with the Ministry of Education.
WFP quickly reached 127,446 children in six governorates, providing them with nutritious meals. Nutrition continues to underpin WFP’s programmes. School Feeding had been on hold since mid-2018, pending the appointment of the new Minister of Education, and because of civil unrest. Early positive responses from parents, children and teachers indicated how the provision of healthy meals encourages students to attend school and focus in class.

In March, because of funding gaps, WFP was forced to reduce monthly distributions to IDPs to every six weeks. WFP took the initiative to bring together the Ministry of Migration and Displacement (MoMD), the Ministry of Trade (MoT)'s Public Distribution System (PDS), and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs to discuss coordination. An agreement was reached, that when MoMD distributed food rations to IDPs in camps, WFP provided smaller, complementary "top-ups" of food or cash. These coordination efforts, along with new donor support, allowed WFP to return to a four-week cycle from July. Assisted-people's levels of food consumption dropped while WFP distributed every six weeks, then improved when back on the four-week cycle. Coordination also led to cash and food savings of USD 7.5 million, helping continued support for those most in need.

A cornerstone of WFP’s work in 2019 was the PDS partnership, launched with MoT in January. WFP provided technical expertise to test digitalizing the PDS information management system to improve transparency and efficiency, so the right people receive food at the right time. The digital “ePDS” registered 70,000 people in 11 governorates, and introduced iris scanning. WFP is developing an app to make it easy for beneficiaries to update their information in the system without having to visit the PDS office. At MoT's request, the PDS initiative is expanding to all 19 governorates in 2020. It is a pillar of WFP’s Country Strategic Plan 2020-2024, which intends to support the government to better meet the needs of its citizens, alongside initiatives that lead to people’s self-sufficiency and lasting resilience.