Assist countries to better target the people most vulnerable to a food price crisis (especially children under two and pregnant and breastfeeding women) with adequate nutrition interventions in their mitigation programs.
Protecting the most vulnerable groups. Few Bank programs, in either low- or middle-income countries, emphasized nutritional support to children under age two and pregnant and breastfeeding women (the most vulnerable people) as part of their food crisis response program, even though most countries "vulnerable" to the food crisis have the highest global malnutrition burdens. Thus only a handful of low-income countries (Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Liberia, Moldova, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Tajikistan) focused on infant and maternal nutrition in their crisis response. Likewise, only a few middle-income countries emphasized infant and maternal nutrition in their crisis response.
Original Response: Agreed: Management will work with client countries to strengthen the targeting of nutrition programs supported by Bank projects responding to food price crises to the most nutritionally vulnerable populations (pregnant/lactating women and children up to 24 months) with a range of appropriate nutrition interventions.
Action 3: Develop guidelines to provide technical advice/assistance to client countries to improve targeting of nutrition programs in response to future food price crises
The guidelines will focus on assisting food price crisis-affected client countries to identify the population subgroups that are/will be most affected nutritionally by the crisis (historically, infants and young children in already impoverished households, often in rural areas, and in households where wage earners operate in the informal sector) and those with special needs (e.g., pregnant women) layout a process for assessing what existing social protection and other programs already target (or can be adjusted/augmented to target) the vulnerable populations of concern and establish protocols for meeting identified gaps for targeting and reaching the targeted nutritionally vulnerable groups with nutritional and other support to protect and promote optimal nutrition status for the most vulnerable in a food price crisis scenario.
Indicator: Guidelines delivered.
Baseline: No guidelines currently exist.
Target: Guidelines delivered and posted on the intranet. Pending alignment with the introduction of the Global Practices the guidelines will be extended to regions through one or more workshops.
Timeline: Outline of the guidelines prepared by the end FY14, guidelines delivered by the end of FY15.
There has been progress in the implementation of the recommendation assisting countries to improve the targeting of nutrition programs supported by World Bank projects responding to food price crises. Two global practices, Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNP) and Social Protection and Labor (SPL), have completed the guidelines: Improving Targeting of the Nutritionally Vulnerable During Food Price Crisis. The guidelines have been peer reviewed by the leading experts in the field and discussed with the both HNP and SPL GPs Global Leads. IEG found the guidelines in high quality and satisfactory. The guidelines have posted in on the intranet since July 2017, and further dissemination activities are underway.
Please see attached final guidelines: Improving Targeting of the Nutritionally Vulnerable during Food Price Crises. (The guidelines are not consolidate, but attached as two separate guidelines as per the original MAR). The guidelines have been discussed with both SP/L and HNP Global Leads and have been reviewed by HNP and SP/L senior specialists/economists. The guidelines are posted on the intranet, and further dissemination activities are planned.
There has been progress in the implementation of the recommendation assisting countries to improve the targeting of nutrition programs supported by World Bank projects responding to food price crises. Two global practices, Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNP) and Social Protection and Labor (SPL), have been compiling the knowledge base generated by the operational experience of the World Bank Group, other development partners, and client country governments. This has been a necessary first step in understanding the evidence as well as filling the knowledge gaps related to targeting the most vulnerable through social safety nets. These global practices also conducted country case studies in FY16. An external consultant, reporting to the above two global practices, has consolidated two sets of guidelines into a single set of consolidated notes that will be shared in January 2017 with WBG staff and client country policy makers and program implementers. It is important to have a meeting in the last quarter of FY17 with the participation of OPCS, HNP, SPL, and IEG to review progress and prepare a road map for the full implementation of this recommendation.
Guidelines are in draft, funding having been secured for this at end-FY16 and the concept note for finalizing the guidelines having been reviewed/approved by the Global Leads for Nutrition and Social Safety Nets.
(HNP GP and SP/L GP). Please see attached files (CN and Response to IEG note 2016).
The consultant, with oversight from a Senior SP Economist and Senior Nutrition Specialist, has completed the attached draft that combines the two sets of guidelines into a single consolidated note . This was deemed most useful to WBG staff and client country policymakers and program implementers.
It is anticipated that the guidelines will be completed, reviewed, finalized and ready for dissemination through SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform, the HNP and SP/L GPs, along with other communications channels by January 2017.
There has been limited progress in the implementation of the recommendation to strengthen the targeting of nutrition programs supported by World Bank projects responding to food price crises. Two global practices, Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNP) and Social Protection and Labor (SPL), are focusing on compiling the knowledge base generated by the operational experience of the World Bank Group, other development partners, and client country governments. This has been a necessary first step in understanding the evidence as well as filling the knowledge gaps related to targeting the most vulnerable through social safety nets. These global practices are also conducting country case studies in fiscal year 2016. It is important to have a meeting in the second half of fiscal year 2016 with the participation of Operations Policy and Country Services, HNP, SPL, and the Independent Evaluation Group to review progress and prepare a road map for the full implementation of the recommendation.
The HNP GP worked closely with the SPL GP in FY15 on the topic of nutrition-sensitive social protection, with a particular focus on compiling the knowledge base generated by the operational experience of the World Bank Group and other development partners and client country governments. This has been a necessary first step in the process of discovery with respect to understanding the evidence as well as the knowledge gaps related to targeting the most nutritionally vulnerable through social safety nets. The SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform (based in the HNP GP) anchored the work program. Among a series of products intended to inform the two recommended management actions (Ref.#0273 and #0274), a curated collection of case studies of nutrition-sensitive social protection projects/approaches (11 WBG and 11 IOs and governments) and a paper on Nutrition and Social Protection were commissioned. The two sets of knowledge products are attached. They were presented in a high-level global forum on nutrition-sensitive social protection in Moscow in September 2015. Following the development of a compendium of the case studies in early FY16, an in-depth analysis of the case studies will inform the preparation of the targeting guidelines recommended for "assisting countries to better target the people most vulnerable to a food price crisis with adequate nutrition interventions in their mitigation programs." It is anticipated that the final version of the guidelines will be ready for posting on websites toward the end of FY16 or in early FY17.
There has been limited progress in the impementation of this recommendation. It is necessary to have a meeting in the second half of fiscal 2015 with participation of OPCS, HNP GP, Social Protection GP and IEG to review the progress and also road map for the full implementation of recommendation.
Under the new Global Practice structure, the HNP GP is working closely with related GPs (primarily Social Protection) to develop guidelines that will improve the ability of client countries undergoing food price crises to strengthen the targeting of their nutrition programs to the most nutritionally vulnerable groups including pregnant/lactating women and children up to 24 months with a range of appropriate nutrition interventions. For example, during a food price crisis response, school feeding programs may be expanded and/or utilized as a platform for accessing vulnerable family members of school-going children (e.g., pregnant women and children under 24 mo in the households of school children) for specialized supplementary feeding -- yet the practical operational issue of identifying/targeting these vulnerable members of the community using the school as a platform demands planning and (possibly) adaptation of existing targeting mechanisms. The HNP and SP GPs will work together to assess and address this issues. It is anticipated that draft guidelines will be available by the end of FY15.