The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food-assistance branch of the
United Nations and the world's leading
humanitarian organization fighting hunger worldwide, delivering food assistance
not only in emergencies but also working with communities to improve nutrition
and build resilience.
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| Climate change has brought hunger and poverty . |
The WFP also offers technical assistance and capacity
strengthening for appropriate sustainable food security and nutrition solutions
which include enhancing capacity for emergency preparedness and response,
logistics, and supply chain management; strengthening risk reduction
capabilities through social safety nets; and bolstering climate risk management,
adaptation and resilience including matter on nutrition.
The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), on the
other hand is mandated among other tasks, to uplift living standards of rural
landless by allocating land rights to and through provision of complementary
support for agrarian reform beneficiaries especially in agrarian reform
communities (ARCs).
Pursuant thereto, the Department of Agrarian Reform
(DAR) and the World Food Programme (WFP) recently forged an agreement to
develop and implement programs towards land tenure improvement and increasing
agricultural productivity, promote social protection and climate resilience in
agrarian reform communities (ARCs).
The primary tasks under this partnership is to
publish an atlas that would be used as essential reference materials for
strategic planning and policy formulation for land tenure improvement and
support services, food security and social protection programs and projects. This
initially involves gathering data, monitoring and assessing information for the
book that would be called The Philippine Food and Nutrition Security Atlas. The
monitoring system will use indicators on food security, poverty reduction and
capacity building on data collection, processing and reporting.
As agreed upon by both parties, the DAR and the WFP
shall work together in providing inputs to the joint publication of the
Philippine Food and Nutrition Security Atlas. They shall likewise work together
in overseeing and supervising activities on programs and projects on disaster
preparedness and climate resilience measures. The partnership will be in effect
until 2020.
In a recently conducted DAR-WFP orientation-workshop
pertaining thereto, it was informed that there are in fact ARCs where
farmer-beneficiaries are experiencing food insecurity while in some areas,
cases of stunting and various forms of malnutrition exists among members of the
farmer-households. The tasks of
addressing these concerns is within the ambit of the DAR-WFP partnership, in
addition to ensuring food security in all agrarian reform communities and
agrarian reform areas.
The right to food of all Filipinos has yet to be
fully realized owing to: a lack of a national right to food strategy/framework;
conflicting laws and policies especially on land use and trade liberalization, etc. -Focus on the Global South (NGO)
