Recommendation 16

HM Government Acknowledged

Partially Accept The response below outlines the FCDO’s comprehensive action plan to address famine risk and food insecurity. We would be happy to make the latest full version available to the Committee on request. A summary of the UK government’s aims contained in the action plan are below: i) Getting the grain out of Ukraine to help stabilise prices. By continuing to support the UN grain deal and supporting Ukrainian transport infrastructure. ii) Prioritising our humanitarian resources to the most vulnerable in the countries at greatest risk of famine. iii) Securing a coordinated international response. Together with allies develop a campaign to use UN General Assembly (UNGA), the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Annual Meetings and G20 Summit this autumn to act for famine prevention and address global fertiliser supply. iv) Boosting fertiliser availability to avoid a food availability crisis in 2023. We will work with G7 and likeminded to deliver a coordinated global fertiliser security response, including increasing supply via the G7, enabling market transparency and trade, and supporting production in developing countries. v) Expanding disaster risk finance and insurance cover to help protect against future drought for up to 12 Sahel, East and Southern African countries. vi) Lobbying international partners to remove protectionist agricultural export restrictions. By working with our embassies to lobby food exporting countries with significant export restrictions, to soften those restriction and let trade flow and encouraging others not to impose restrictions and if they do, to do so transparently and inform WTO. vii) Keep UK sanctions under review in relation to developing countries’ ability to access food and fertiliser, and consider any mitigations required. viii) Influencing the Multilateral development banks to substantially frontload resources and take action to support the most vulnerable counties. • Ensure the World Bank’s $30bn food security pledge is sufficiently front loaded and fully committed over the next 12 months; and the World Bank sets out detail on how the $30bn will be spent and monitored by end August. • Ensure the African Development Bank’s $1.5bn African Emergency Food Production Facility is committed by end 2022, supported by the UK’s $2bn Room2Run guarantee. b) increase humanitarian funding for food assistance programmes to reflect increased global food and fuel costs and to meet need. Accept There is a small window to act early to avert the worst outcomes of food insecurity. We are working with partners across the humanitarian system, including the UN, other donors, and the International Financial Institutions, to take early and coordinated action, prioritise and disburse funding as quickly as possible to the most vulnerable – especially women and girls – and promote anticipatory action to prevent recurring cycles of famine. Specifically for the Horn of Africa we have: • This year spent over £76 million on humanitarian efforts in the region, with recent allocations prioritising protection against immediate threats to life2. • In Somalia in response to acute food insecurity, we have added another £5million to our bilateral response, where we have been reaching almost half a million of the most vulnerable people across the country. • Our £6 million contribution to the Ethiopian Humanitarian Fund will scale up our efforts to respond to communities most affected by drought and conflict in Ethiopia. • In Sudan, we have provided a further £3million to the World Food Programme who will be helping to provide 120,000 vulnerable people with two months of lifesaving food assistance. • We have mobilised new funding commitments, having helped for example to bring together states at the UN Horn of Africa drought roundtable in April which mobilise roughly $400million in new commitments. We are one of the largest donors to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF)3, which is pioneering initiatives on anticipatory action, including in Ethiopia and Somalia. Looking more long term the government is intending to increase our humanitarian funding to £3 billion over the next 3 years as set out in the international development strategy (IDS4). This government’s manifesto5 also includes a commitment to work towards ending preventable deaths, including through improved nutrition for women, adolescent girls and children.