HIGHLIGHTS
• Limited funding forced food assistance activities to be scaled down.
• Due to funding shortfalls, refugees are facing a further reduction of the e-card value from US$19 to US$ 13.5 for July.
• The impact of the reduction of assistance was captured by WFP and its partners during April focus group discussions with families reporting various negative coping strategies such as begging, borrowing cash and child labour.
• WFP with UNICEF, UNHCR and partners completed the collection of data for the 2015 VASyR in June and preliminary results indicate a clear deterioration of the food security situation of Syrian refugees: households applying severe and crisis coping strategies have increased from 28% to 67% whilst the number of food secure households have decreased from 25% to 7%.
• Following the e-card validation and the targeting exercise, 153,682 persons no longer receive food assistance.
• As part of the sector’s objective in enhancing effective coordination, FAO and MoA, in partnership with REACH published the Food Security and Livelihoods assessment on Lebanese host communities. Based on the assessment results, 89% of Lebanese have an acceptable food consumption score and 5% rely heavily on coping strategies.
• While 39% of Lebanon’s population can be considered to have agriculture as a source of livelihoods, very limited funds have been allocated to promote food availability.