Highlights
• In January, WFP reached an estimated 2.7 million people across Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey through various food and cash-based assistance programmes.
• From January, the regional response is now covered by one Country Strategic Plan in Lebanon, and four Transitional Interim Country Strategic Plans in the other four countries.
• WFP’s Tech for Food project won the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab “Innovative for Refugees” award. The prize was received at the award ceremony in Jordan’s King Hussein Business Park along with a USD 20,000 cheque for the Tech for Food project.
Situation Update
• As of January, there are more than 5.4 million refugees from Syria in neighbouring countries of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, according to UNHCR.
• The Iraqi Prime Minister and the Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister said progress has been made in mending fences between federal Iraq and Kurdistan Region. In January, the two prime ministers met twice, once in Baghdad and again in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.
• On 20 January, Turkey launched “Operation Olive Branch” against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in the Afrin region of northwestern Syria. Turkey considers its presence along the border a threat to Turkey’s national security. After the operation ends, Turkey has said it plans to return some of the Syrian refugee population into the Afrin region.
WFP Response
Food and Nutrition Assistance Regional
• In January, WFP reached an estimated 2.7 million people across Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey through various food and cash assistance programmes under the Country Strategic Plan (CSP) in Lebanon and Transitional Interim CSPs in the four countries.
Egypt
• WFP Egypt supported a total of 76,842 refugees from Syria with cash-based transfers (CBTs) through general food assistance (GFA) and food-assistance-for-training (FFT) activities. Each beneficiary received a monthly voucher assistance worth EGP 400 (USD 22).
• WFP is shifting towards resilience activities to promote and support different employment schemes and livelihood opportunities in the most impacted districts. These activities include enhanced access to vocational and skills training opportunities for youth and adults, enabling them to find jobs through job placement services or receive support to self-employment.
• WFP is seeking to partner with health clinics to provide nutritional support to pregnant and nursing women (PNW), both within the Syrian refugee and host communities. The objective of this intervention is to raise the nutrition intake of Syrian and Egyptian pregnant women in their second and third trimester, and breastfeeding mothers in the first two years of the child's age. WFP is planning to support PNW in completing their regular medical checkups; a conditional paper voucher will be distributed monthly based on completion of monthly regular checkups.
Iraq
• WFP Iraq reached a total of 57,854 Syrian refugees with CBTs through GFA, totaling USD 1.1 million of assistance during the month. Each beneficiary of either unrestricted cash transfers or e-vouchers received IQD 22,000 (USD 19) per month.
• The phase 2 of the Tech for Food activity, launched in December 2017, is ongoing with 57 returning students from the pilot phase. The returning students are taking WordPress and online freelancing as well as working on projects’ simulation and testing income -generating platforms and services. Both groups are also taking English language classes. Recruitment of 50 new participants to take part in a new eight-week round of basic training is being finalised.
Jordan
• WFP Jordan supported a total of 502,977 Syrian refugees and vulnerable Jordanians with in-kind and CBTs through GFA and FFA activities. The extremely vulnerable Syrian refugees in host communities were assisted through e-cards with a value of JOD 20 (USD 28), and vulnerable refugees through e-cards with a value of JOD 10 (USD 14).
• Given the promising results of the blockchain pilot in Village 5 of Azraq camp, WFP expanded the use of the innovative technology to both Azraq and Za’atri camps. Blockchain technology harnesses the power of an open-source blockchain technology to create and manage beneficiary accounts, complete assistance reloads, and authorizes transactions. Over 106,000 beneficiaries now redeem their monthly entitlements through blockchain technology.
• WFP continued the implementation of “choice” modality in three governorates: Balqa, Zarqa and Madaba for about 60,000 Syrian refugees. During January, 50 percent of “choice” beneficiaries redeemed assistance as e-vouchers, 39 percent as cash, 7 percent as both, while the remaining did not redeem their assistance. “Choice” is an innovative modality introduced by WFP in Jordan, allowing beneficiaries to redeem their assistance either as food-restricted vouchers or unrestricted cash, or both as per their preferred choice.
• WFP continued to support 1,600 participants (8,000 vulnerable Syrians and Jordanians), half of which are women with short-term employment opportunities.
Activities not only supported people’s livelihoods, but also focused on developing public and municipal infrastructure. It is also aimed at reinforcing social cohesion between Syrians and Jordanians. Activities included rehabilitation of schools, health centers and municipal assets, forestry and training at WFPcontracted shops.
Lebanon
• WFP Lebanon assisted 725,741 Syrian refugees, Palestinian refugees from Syria, and vulnerable Lebanese with food and cash assistance through GFA, and school meals.
• Using the 2017 targeting formula developed by the American University of Beirut (AUB), in 2018, WFP targets 695,000 Syrian refugees identified as living below the survival minimum expenditure basket an increase from approximately 680,000 people targeted in 2017.
• WFP is drafting the Food Security Outcome Monitoring report for January 2018. Key findings include the following:
• The percentage of households having acceptable food consumption reached its highest since 2016 across all groups/ modalities. The Cash for Food group had the highest score with 75 percent of households having acceptable food consumption score.
• Food is still the first priority for all beneficiaries (90 percent of multi-purpose cash families and 87 percent of cash for food families).
Turkey
• WFP Turkey reached a total of 1,330,454 beneficiaries in January. Of this, a total of 144,096 beneficiaries received e-vouchers with monthly value of TRY 50 (USD 18) under the in-camp assistance programme.
• Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) payments were made to 1,186,358 people in January, or 201,989 households. The average beneficiary household size is 5.9 people per household. Applications to the ESSN continue to grow: there are over 9,000 new applications in January.
• Initial analysis of the first round of ESSN PostDistribution Monitoring data was completed in January. The data showed a larger increase in the food consumption score of beneficiaries compared with that of non-beneficiaries. Beneficiaries’ use of negative coping strategies also decreased. These initial findings are a positive indication of the ESSN’s short-term effects, allowing refugee households to meet their basic needs. Further analysis of the data is on-going with the World Bank.