Food Security and Nutrition Intersector Support for

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

17 September 2024-23:59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

To learn more about WFP, visit our website:
WHY JOIN WFP?- WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.- WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.- WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.- A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.- We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
In 2022, the world faced a historic food and nutrition crisis. Continuing in 2024, an estimated 29 million children will suffer from wasting in 15 of the worst-affected countries. In the same countries, 156 million people are estimated to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, which is an 83 per cent increase from 2019 (before the global pandemic). The number of people living in emergency and catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity also saw a significant increase and represents a deterioration of the situation since 2019. As a United Nations (UN) agency reaching an estimated 150 million nutritionally vulnerable and food-insecure people each year, WFP plays a critical role in multi-stakeholder efforts to address malnutrition.

In humanitarian response, strong collaboration between sectors/clusters contributing to saving lives is crucial to reaching the most vulnerable in a time-sensitive manner. Synergetic sectors relevant to nutrition and other multi-dimensional vulnerabilities are food, health and WASH (in addition to nutrition sector itself).

WFP, as a co-lead of the global Food Security Cluster (gFSC) and active member of the Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC), is committed to leverage its mandate and footprint to strengthen collaboration across the relevant humanitarian sectors/clusters to prevent famine, undernutrition and death.

Knowing that the inadequate availability and lack of access to and consumption of nutritious food are the main drivers of acute malnutrition and famine, WFP aspires to strengthen inter-cluster/sector collaboration between the food and nutrition clusters to ensure programmes convergence and that services delivered target beneficiaries at the same time and place, maximizing impact.

In 2023, WHO launched a new Guideline on the Prevention and Management of Wasting and Nutritional Oedema which together with the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting (GAP) provides an opportunity to foster new program approaches to ensure that as many children and women affected by crises as possible benefit from coordinated efforts to prevent and address wasting.

WFP with its partner UNICEF has developed a joint strategic approach to accelerate programmatic shifts in humanitarian and fragile contexts based on this new WHO Guideline. WFP and UNICEF will work together to provide a combined package of interventions to address child wasting leveraging their roles as food security and nutrition cluster leads. The joint approach elevates attention given to preventive actions as part of every program response and to increasing convergence and coverage to reach those populations most vulnerable and hardest to reach in areas of high acute food insecurity and acute malnutrition.

This requires joint approaches to identifying vulnerabilities, targeting and addressing the needs of people requiring both food security and nutrition specific interventions (as well as health and WASH interventions as appropriate). Given the focus on humanitarian and fragile contexts, the close collaboration of the nutrition and food security clusters, will be required around analysis, assessment, targeting, program implementation and monitoring.

The joint approach will be implemented through a phased three-year transition plan (2024-2026) in 15 priority countries: (Haiti, Nigeria, Kenya, South Sudan and Madagascar in Phase 1 and with B