WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific - 2016 SPRs RBB 2016 SPRs by project type | Page 82

Standard Project Report 2016
Strategic Objective 3: Reduce risk and enable people, communities and countries to meet their own food and
nutrition needs.
Outcome: Improved access to livelihood assets has contributed to enhanced resilience and reduced risk from
disaster and shocks faced by targeted food-insecure communities and households.
Activities: Productive assets and livelihood support.
The productive assets and livelihoods support activities aimed to achieve multiple outcomes. First, they help
vulnerable communities to construct and rehabilitate community assets to enhance their livelihood opportunities.
Second, as diets typically deteriorate from the post-harvest period to the lean season, the activities aimed to
stabilise food consumption patterns by supporting the poorest in the community through a conditional food transfer.
The community asset scores measured after the programme implementation period suggest that the programme
had a positive effect as 87 percent of the communities where activities were implemented in 2016 achieved an
increase in the community asset score compared to the set target at 80 percent. Selection of assets through a
participatory approach linked to the annual commune planning cycle aimed to enhance ownership and sustainability
as well as complementarity with investments made from the communes’ own budgets. Food security status of the
community members is assessed through key food security indicators such as Food Consumption Score (FCS),
Dietary Diversity Score (DDS) and Reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI). During 2016, only one measure of
coping strategies was possible which does not allow for the calculation of the change captured by the rCSI.
However, when comparing the average CSI for the beneficiary population (2.25) at the end of the programme period
it is noted that the target group seemed better off than households surveyed during the May 2016 resilience survey
(average 2.73 for all households) and particularly better than IDPoor households (3.88). In 2016, beneficiary
households consumed on average 5.1 food groups per week compared to 4.8 food groups in 2015 against the
target of 5 food groups. This indicates that the quality of the diet among the beneficiary households was better in
2016 than among participating households in the previous year. In 2016, 92.5 percent of the beneficiary households
had acceptable food consumption and 7.5 percent had poor and borderline consumption; this indicates that the
proportion of food-insecure households among this year’s target communities was lower at the end of the
programme than in 2015. It is noted that in addition to the results of the programme, the effect of the El Niño year
and influence of the season during which programme results were measured may have influenced findings in both
negative and positive directions. Continuation of the programme in the same or similar communities in 2017 will
allow for greater comparison over a sustained implementation period.
Among households headed by women, 15.7 percent had poor and borderline food consumption compared with 4.7
percent of households headed by men; poor consumption had dramatically changed from zero in 2015 to 3.9
percent in 2016. While the demographics of the households headed by women from 2015 are not available, in 2016,
70 percent were widowed whereas in 9 percent of the households husbands were unable (because of old age and
illness) to work; this points towards limited productivity and income earning capacity in the household. While it will
be important for programme to explore ways to address these gendered vulnerabilities, it speaks to the strength of
the programme in that the diversified portfolio of activities attracted participants from such households, which was
previously considered impossible because of the high physical labour requirements associated with work activities.
Progress Towards Gender Equality
Cambodia is undergoing rapid economic growth fueled by industrialisation and urbanisation resulting in increased
migration from rural to urban areas for work, particularly for young women. These changes, along with increased
educational attainment, are slowly shifting the roles of women and men and increasing women’s empowerment.
However, international comparisons of gender inequality demonstrate that Cambodian women still face many
challenges particularly in reproductive health, empowerment and labour market participation.
A WFP review of the gendered nature of intra-household decision-making in Cambodia aimed to improve
interpretation of indicators related to women’s empowerment and protection in relation to food and cash
scholarships. Though the scholarship was viewed as a benefit for the family, women were usually responsible for
managing the use of the resource, irrespective of the sex of the recipient. The findings suggest that this has not
greatly affected women’s empowerment. However, women acquire knowledge and confidence from participation in
programme gatherings therefore increasingly engaging in discussions both in their household and their
communities.
A WFP nationwide resilience survey in December 2016 found that in 82 percent of households, women were sole
decision-makers with regard to daily household expenditures (in 12 percent of the households, decisions were
made jointly); for large household expenditures, women were sole decision-makers in 27 percent of the households
while in 66 percent, decisions were made jointly. Interestingly, among IDPoor households a larger proportion
Cambodia, Kingdom of (KH)
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Country Programme - 200202