Food Assistance Convention – FAC

This section provides an overview of the Food Assistance Convention, its main objectives and the work the Commission does in the framework of this Convention.

Objectives

The objectives of the Food Assistance Convention are to save lives, reduce hunger, improve food security, and improve the nutritional status of the most vulnerable populations by:

  • addressing the food and nutritional needs of the most vulnerable populations through commitments made by the Parties to provide food assistance that improves access to, and consumption of, adequate, safe and nutritious food;
  • ensuring that food assistance provided to the most vulnerable populations is appropriate, timely, effective, efficient, and based on needs and shared principles; and
  • facilitating information-sharing, cooperation, and coordination, and providing a forum for discussion in order to improve the effective, efficient, and coherent use of the Parties’ resources to respond to needs.

A focus on food assistance rather than on food aid.

Focus on improved access to and consumption of safe, adequate and nutritious food.

Promotion of local and regional procurement, where commodities are the solution and minimisation of associated costs.

The spirit of the Convention is primarily on emergency assistance, i.e. it should apply only to humanitarian crises or a transition context.

Flexible annual minimum commitments of a Party: can be expressed as in-kind or in cash.

The EU is signatory of the Food Assistance Convention.
To meet the objectives of this Convention, each Party agrees to make an annual commitment on food assistance, set in accordance with its laws and regulations.
Each Party’s commitment is referred to as its “minimum annual commitment”. The EU committed for 2020 is €350m .
Furthermore, the Commission has an obligation and an operational requirement to advocate on behalf of the chronically poor and food insecure.
The Commission advocates for the FAC to promote the most effective and appropriate use of resources disbursed from within FAC commitments, according to the needs of the most vulnerable, in line with humanitarian principles and best humanitarian food assistance practice, and in a way that is coherent with its own policy framework.

Dr. Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director of the ECHO Strategy, Policy and International Cooperation ECHO, elected to chair International Food Assistance Convention Committee during its 2015 sessions on behalf of the EU.

I shall strive to further enhance the role of the FAC Committee into a forum for policy discussions in addition to its important role in mobilising resource commitment for food assistance

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EUROPEAN CIVIL PROTECTION AND HUMANITARIAN AID OPERATIONS

TOPIC 1\

Introduction to the HFA

TOPIC 2\

HFA - Definitions

TOPIC 3\

Trends

TOPIC 4\

HFA overview

TOPIC 5\

Entry and Exit principles

TOPIC 6\

Programming HFA interventions

TOPIC 7\

Needs assessment

TOPIC 8\

HFA toolbox

TOPIC 9\

Transfer modalities

TOPIC 10\

Targeting

TOPIC 11\

Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)

TOPIC 12\

Livelihood in HFA

TOPIC 13\

Nutrition and HFA

TOPIC 14\

Gender and HFA

TOPIC 15\

Protection and HFA

TOPIC 16\

Capacity building

TOPIC 17\

Coordination

TOPIC 18\

LEGS

TOPIC 19\

Household Economic Approach

TOPIC 20\

Food utilisation

TOPIC 21\

IPC

TOPIC 22\

Market Assesment

TOPIC 23\

HFA Indicators

TOPIC 24\

Cash learning partnership - CaLP

TOPIC 25\

Food Assistance Convention (FAC)

TOPIC 26\

Single Form and the HFA checklist

TOPIC 27\

Social Protection and ECHO