Editorial: food security, complex emergencies and longer-term programming.

Papers Editorial: food security, complex emergencies and longer-term programming Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Food security in complex emergencies: enhancing food system resilience Food security in protracted crises: building more effective policy frameworks A 'principled' approach to complex emergencies: testing a new aid delivery model in the Nuba Mountains Sara Pantuliano Matching food security analysis to context: the experience of the Somalia Food Security Assessment Unit Günter Hemrich War and food security in Eritrea and Ethiopia, 1998–2000 Philip White s1–s4 s5–s24 s25–s51 s52–s66 s67–s91 s92–s113 Editorial: food security, complex emergencies and longer-term programming Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations This special issue of Disasters contains a selection of the contributions to an international workshop entitled 'Food security in complex emergencies—building policy frameworks to address longer-term programming challenges'. The meeting, which took place in September 2003, was hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and was funded by the European Commission. 1 The rationale for the workshop was the need to respond to two main contemporary trends affecting food security. First, the number and scale of conflict-related food security emergencies are greater than ever, and, over the past decade, violent conflict has come to play a more predominant role in exacerbating the impacts of natural hazards, such as droughts, on food crises. While there is not necessarily a linear, causal relationship between hunger and conflict, the two are often related, especially when the conflict is long-standing and its ramifications are compounded by HIV/AIDS. Second, while donors are increasingly obliged to fund short-term emergency interventions, insufficient attention tends to be given to preventing and preparing for crises, while needs for extended forms of assistance in protracted crises often remain unmet. Resources for long-term development aid have stagnated or decreased in recent years. Humanitarian and development agencies have started to find themselves in agreement on the need to identify new policy frameworks to guide responses to short-term and protracted emergencies and to address the need for sustainable food security. Yet, while a clear set of principles guides humanitarian assistance, concepts and capacities for designing longer-term policies and interventions require further development. This workshop brought together 36 people from 20 agencies, including civil society, donor and research institutions, government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the United Nations (UN). The key objective was to pinpoint the elements of policy frameworks to enhance the resilience of food …