Norwegian People’s Aid began relief food distribution with USAID/FFP support in 1994. NPA began distributions on the East Bank of the river Nile, but were asked by FFP to concentrate on the West Bank from 1997 as areas of responsibility were broadly defined for NPA, WFP and CRS as the three main food aid organisations.

The Relief Food Distribution Project was part of the overall Food Security (and Rural Livelihoods) Programme and fell under the overall goal of “Contribute to the right of the rural poor communities of South Sudan to have improved livelihoods.” For the period 2000 – 2007 NPA with donor support from FFP, OFDA and MFA Norway were able to manage an integrated package of appropriate interventions ranging from provision of relief food to targeted communities; basic agriculture support; and rural livelihood development in order to lead towards achievement of this goal. 

The objective for the Relief Food Distribution Project was “Critical food needs of the targeted rural poor populations that have poor access and entitlement to food from their own production, purchase or exchange are met.” NPA see this objective to be achieved when sufficient food is produced or available to meet internally displaced, returnees or resident’s needs, and the vulnerable populations have access and entitlement to enough food to live without immediate fear of hunger.

The need for relief food distribution to vulnerable communities is determined by assessments that are based on the Household Food Economy Approach (HFEA). This participatory method focuses strongly on traditional livelihoods and communities’ strategies and options for accessing food, ranging from own production, wild food collection, kinship support, to sale of local goods or labour. Typically the communities are not passive beneficiaries requiring a 100% food ration as support except in emergency displacement situations, but require partial assistance only to enable them cope with food security stress due to insecurity, drought or other local and temporary shock. Ration levels of 40 -60% are often recommended by the NPA assessment team during the cultivation/hunger period to enable the targeted households use all their energy on preparation of ground and planting/tending crops instead of seeking other food options away from the farm.  For most of the years in this report NPA used the following ration levels per person, per day: Cereals 400gms, Pulses 65gms, Vegetable Oil 25gms, Salt 5gms. This was raised in later years to Cereals 450gms, Pulses 65gms, Vegetable Oil 30gms with Salt dropping from the ration, to be more in accordance with WFP ration levels.

Irene Commodity Tracking

 

Great attention is given to identifying when a relief food intervention is required, for what period and at what level of ration, when it is to be scaled down and when it is to be phased out. This minimises the risk of creating relief assistance dependency.  Justification for downscaling and terminating the response is through solid evidence that the needs which prompted relief food assistance in the first place have been met.

During the 8 years of these reports, NPA used their unique position outside of the OLS/UN umbrella to maintain capacity to respond to critical food needs despite conditions of insecurity or defined statements from the Government of Sudan not allowing UN agencies to respond to humanitarian emergencies in certain locations. Coupled with this was the strong logistical capacity to deliver food aid by cost effective road transport to remote areas and the added airlift capacity from within South Sudan to under-served areas that WFP could not consistently support.

In the period 2000 – 2007 a total of 60,998 metric tonnes of relief food was distributed by NPA and this was accomplished with a total budget made up of Inland Transport, Internal Transport, Storage and Handling (ITSH). In addition were the “in kind” contributions from FFP of the commodities over these 8 years and the Ocean Freight costs.

As the Relief Food Distribution Project moved into 2008, NPA were requested by FFP to concentrate further on those areas that other agencies could not reliably serve, and to leave the relatively easier areas of Central and Western Equatoria to other agencies including WFP. The project increasingly focussed on Unity, Jonglei and Eastern Upper Nile States.