WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific - 2016 SPRs RBB 2016 SPRs by country | Page 22

Standard Project Report 2016
14. To strengthen WFP's capacity to deliver its gender strategy, WFP engaged the Afghan Women Network, an
umbrella group of civil society organizations headed by women, with the view of entering a formal partnership in
2017.
WFP continued to work with United Nations sister agencies to respond to the immediate needs of conflict-affected
internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, and refugees by working with the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM); respond to natural
disasters by working with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and
prevent and treat moderate acute malnutrition by working with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The
agreements with IOM and UNHCR were critical in ensuring a coordinated and coherent response to the influx of
returnees from Pakistan in the second half of the year through the creation of a single registry for providing
assistance to returnees.
WFP also strengthened its partnership with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of
Women (UN Women), by engaging in a number of initiatives including the Safe Market initiative which involves the
establishment of safe market spaces for women entrepreneurs. This initiative also benefited women graduating from
WFP-assisted the vocations skills training (VST) programmes and those enrolled in the internship programme that
provided successful on-the-job training for a dozen female graduates.
WFP established a unified market price data collection system and enhanced the capacity of the Ministry of
Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock in the data collection of market prices, analysis and quality and timely reporting.
WFP has done two rounds of training for national and provincial staff from the Ministry, and provided financial
support to conduct trader surveys across the country and in-kind support such as office equipment, and facilitated
training abroad for the ministry staff on price and market assessments.
WFP, in consultation with the Central Statistics Organization (CSO), identified financial and capacity gaps and
provided technical, financial and in-kind support for enhancing CSO capacity in the collection of quality data
collection, processing, analysis and publication of timely reports. WFP carried out the food security part of the
assessment training for CSO national and field staff.
WFP provided training to staff of the Ministry of Public Health and cooperating partners to enhance their capacity to
respond and deliver a quality treatment of moderate acute malnutrition programme at scale.
WFP supported the Ministry of Education in the development of a national school feeding policy. In forming this
policy, WFP and the Ministry built on the experience and lessons learned from the school meals programme from
past projects and concluded that a successful and sustainable country-owned school meal project depends on its
integration into national laws and sector policies, strategies and plans. Hence, the policy is a step towards
sustaining the school meals programme to ensure nutritious and healthy food to Afghan primary and secondary
school pupils every school day.
WFP recognised communities as being central to asset creation, because they are ultimately the end-users of
assets created, and are best placed to know the real needs for each community. The community members were
engaged from the planning phase through to the implementation process. Keeping in mind this reality, WFP
established strong partnerships with community-based organizations including local shuras, Community
Development Councils and District Development Assemblies. The coordination with communities also helps to
ensure the sustainability of the assets created with WFP assistance.
Furthermore, WFP started working with Kabul University and the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and
Development to conduct a training on monitoring and evaluation and asset creation for the Ministry's field staff. The
purpose of this project management training is to harmonise technical minimum standards, communications,
monitoring practices and to strengthen disaster risk reduction approaches at all levels.
Performance Monitoring
WFP Afghanistan operates under the ‘no monitoring – no implementation’ principle. The operational context of
Afghanistan is heavily linked to access issues. Thus food assistance is monitored by WFP field staff in areas where
access is possible. In areas with restricted access, WFP utilises third party monitors, or programme assistance
teams (PATs). PAT monitors conduct traditional monitoring activities (i.e., post-distribution monitorin g, process
monitoring, shop monitoring, and gender and protection surveys), as well as a range of operational tasks while
representing WFP in the field. These duties include representation with local administrations, negotiation for access,
follow-up on beneficiary complaints, and coordination with cooperating partners in the deep field. Around 85
percent of field activities nationwide are undertaken by PAT companies, and 15 percent by WFP monitors. WFP is
planning to implement joint monitoring with the Ministry of Public Health and the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) for nutrition activities.
Afghanistan, Islamic Republic of (AF)
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Single Country PRRO - 200447