Deployment 3
Name of sector: Assessment
Dates of deployment: 12 August – 27 September 2019
Reason for request:
The Central African Republic (CAR) was considered one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, in terms of the proportion of the population displaced and people in need of humanitarian aid. According to the OCHA 2019 CAR Response Plan, more than 1 in 2 Central Africans—2.9 million people—relied on humanitarian aid to survive. Ongoing conflict due to a Civil War which began in 2012 has culminated in a protection and security crisis, with more than 50% of the country currently under the control of various armed groups. This has only worsened the situation in a country with some of the poorest health indicators in the world; 4th for infant mortality, 2nd for maternal mortality, and classified as the 187th of 188 countries in terms of human development index (HDI).
The ongoing conflict worsened conditions for already vulnerable families. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projection for Sept-Oct 2019 estimated that 1.35 million people (29% of the population) would be facing severe acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+) and called for urgent action. Undernutrition is a major problem in the country, constituting one of the primary causes of morbidity among children under five. The most recent national SMART survey conducted in 2018 showed a national prevalence of global acute malnutrition (GAM) of 7,1%, a prevalence of global chronic malnutrition of 37.7%. However, due to concerns about the quality of the 2018 national SMART survey, UNICEF recommended repeating the exercise in 2019 with additional technical support. On 12 August 2019, the Tech RRT Assessment Advisor was deployed to Bangui, CAR.
Key achievements:
- Contributed to the finalization and validation of the CAR National SMART survey protocol
- Refined and adapted survey tools for data collection, including electronic questionnaire for mobile data collection
- Co-facilitated the SMART enumerator training with a total of 106 participants
Deployment 2
Name of sector: Multi-sectoral
Dates of deployment: 24 June – 1 July 2019
Reason for request:
The Inter-cluster Nutrition Working Group (ICWG) is a joint working group of the Global Food Security Cluster (gFSC), co-led by FAO and WFP, and the Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC), led by UNICEF, established in 2012.
The ICWG has identified the limited capacities of humanitarian partners and clusters for multi-sectoral nutrition sensitive and specific programming among the main barriers to effectively achieve nutrition outcomes in humanitarian settings. To address this, the ICWG developed a training package to support in-country cluster coordinators and partners in applying nutrition-sensitive approaches across sectors. The training package has been already rolled out in 4 countries (Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia and DRC) and need to be rolled out in CAR; with more countries in the pipeline to help build an integrated response package to better aid the over 6 million people in need.
The Tech RRT CMAM Advisor was responsible to co-facilitate the integrated cluster training package in a 3-day workshop in Bangui – CAR.
Key achievements:
- Integrated cluster training co-facilitated in Bangui in June 2019.
Deployment 1
Name of sector: IYCF-E
Dates of deployment: 02 February – 16 March 2019
Reason for request:
The humanitarian situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) has rapidly and tragically continued to deteriorate in 2018. Though democratic presidential elections were held, the peace process hasn’t translated into improved conditions for the men, women, boys and girls of CAR. The proportion of people in need of humanitarian aid is among the highest in the world. Nearly 1 in 2 Central Africans – including 2.2 million children – depends on humanitarian aid to survive. Entire regions remain beyond the effective control or authority of the Government Security. Armed groups are shifting alignment and splintering which prevent negotiation for humanitarian access, while controlling approximately 70% of the country.
In 2018, the nutrition situation for children in CAR has continued to worsen. The most recent rapid SMART survey results reveal a deterioration of the nutritional situation requiring more resources to meet the current nutritional needs in many regions in the country. These data show SAM prevalence higher than 2 percent in 39 sub-prefectures (out of 78 in total) and Global Acute Malnutrition prevalence (GAM) higher than 15 percent (WHO standards as a critical situation) in 6 sub-prefectures. According to the national nutrition survey (SMART, 2014), GAM stands at 6.6% and SAM at 1.9%. National prevalence may not be representative of the situation as the most vulnerable areas are not accessible. It is estimated that there will be 43,055 children aged 6-59 months with SAM and 69,297 children with MAM in CAR in 2019.
As an aggravating factor, IYCF-E response remains low across the country and there is a limited capacity across partners to provide qualitative and consistent IYCF-E interventions. There is an urgent need to strengthen IYCF-E activities, monitoring and reporting systems, and to put in place an IYCF-E response plan for adequate scaling up. Therefore the Tech RRT IYCF-E Advisor was deployed in CAR in February 2019 to support the nutrition cluster.
Key achievements:
- IYCF capacity assessment report.
- IYCF-E response plan outlining gaps, activities, timeline, and resources and funding needed.
- Capacity building and organization of training/mentoring of partners, including modules on IYCF-E orientation for other sectors.
- A package of standardized M&E tools using indicators agreed upon by the Nutrition Cluster members.
Post deployment webinar: A post-deployment webinar took place on 29th November 2019. The slides can be found here.