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Revolution: From Food Aid to Food Assistance — Thematic Areas
populations whose right to food is not being realized. In the outer circle, where WFP has no mandate and limited expertise, strong partners such as OHCHR are essential in establishing a United Nations-wide system for reporting and in guiding staff on what to do when they witness abuses. A do-no-harm element throughout the whole framework: This means asking the basic question, is food assistance itself causing or perpetuating protection problems for affected populations? This question is not new or controversial for WFP and other assistance agencies, but the protection approach outlined here demands systematic situation analysis that goes beyond the traditional, natural disaster-related model of food security analysis, and that reexamines assumptions as a conflict or protracted crisis evolves. A framework of analysis that considers food-related protection issues at the individual beneficiary and community levels can also provide important insights into whether assistance itself is fuelling unrest or conflict, and therefore creating hunger.
3. Tools for protection within food assistance 3.1 Teaching staff to see food assistance through a protection lens Research and field testing of programme support to country offices revealed some major knowledge gaps within WFP, and a need for structured tools for analysing and proposing responses to protection concerns with an impact on food security. First, as humanitarians, there is both a practical and an ethical need for all staff, in all areas, to know and understand the basic humanitarian principles and legal framework that provide guidance on which food assistance activities to implement in crisis situations. Neutrality and impartiality are essential for obtaining and securing access to vulnerable populations, and therefore crucial to meeting WFP’s most fundamental objective of saving lives. Second, staff must understand that their responsibility and accountability extend beyond a food distribution, and include the safety and dignity of the people they are trying to help. This responsibility reflects the core ethics of humanitarianism, and embracing it is the equivalent of seeing all food assistance through a protection lens. Third, a protection lens is not enough without practical fieldbased solutions to the protection dilemmas that threaten the outcomes of food assistance projects. Box 15.1 summarizes the main elements of a three-day package of training and facilitation that forms the starting point for preparing WFP country offices to address these three issues and incorporate protection into food assistance activities. Further details are given in Table 15.2 in the annex to this chapter.