SITUATION ANALYSIS
Limited sector funding forced food assistance activities in July to be scaled further down with WFP being forced to reduce the e-card value from US$19 to US$ 13.5 per person for July due to funding shortfalls.
During July, the food security sector provided food assistance to around 915,000 individuals: 780,436 Syrian refugees with e-card assistance ($13.5) and 41,070 Palestine refugees from Syria with cash for food assistance. Around 4,000 displaced Syrian and 2,000 PRS and PRL received food vouchers and 27,209 vulnerable Lebanese received food assistance through the NPTP. In addition, during the month of July, 88,126 Syrian refugees and affected Lebanese received food parcels. The high number of distributed food parcels reflects the efforts of sector partners such as Islamic Relief Lebanon, AVSI, IOCC and IHR distributing additional food parcels for Ramadan. Limited funding also prohibited sector actors from starting other food security activities, which would work to reduce the dependency on food assistance.
The Food Security Sector has worked to coordinate planned Ramadan food distributions with all known actors to avoid duplication and gaps and to target the most vulnerable groups as far as possible. A lessons learned will be prepared jointly with MoSA to improve coordination for the next Ramadan.
WFP and its cooperating partners have been conducting regular monthly monitoring of WFP food assistance at the household level. The monitoring has revealed that families are applying coping strategies to meet their food needs notably relying on less expensive food and limiting the number of meals and portions consumed daily. The food security sector working group is working to mitigate the impact by coordinating within the working group, with other sectors and by reviewing potential targeting options.
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 amidst ongoing funding shortfalls; 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%; 70 percent of households are below the poverty line (US$3.84/person/day), an increase from 50 percent.
FAO provided poultry production inputs to 820 additional Lebanese small scale famers/households in July. With more than 30,000 eggs that are currently being produced on a daily basis both the food security levels as well as the livelihoods of more than 1,500 households who have been assisted to date has been improved. Based on the weekly monitoring assessments for during the first month, on average 88% of farmers and households consumed a portion of the eggs produced and 28% of the farmers have reported selling the eggs, of which 85% to relatives and neighbors and the rest in the market. A marketing training is currently planned to take place for the beneficiaries during September.