Two million people in Lebanon are food insecure: FAO

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An analysis launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture predicts that the situation will deteriorate in the coming months, pointing to the devaluation of the Lebanese lira, the removal of subsidies, and the rising cost of living, which is preventing families from having enough food and other daily basic needs.

FAO Ambassador to Lebanon, Nora Ourabah Haddad, expressed that the food security situation is worrying, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Food Insecurity Analysis.

This study highlighted the deteriorating level of food security of Lebanese and Syrian refugees.

This deterioration resulted from a three-year-old economic crisis, which profoundly affected the population, driving more than two million people to need assistance, including 1.29 million Lebanese and around 700,000 Syrian refugees.

The living situation is expected to worsen in the coming months, between January and April of this year, with the equivalent of one and a half million Lebanese residents and about 800,000 Syrian refugees likely to worsen, according to this phased classification.

Based on the final report, which is the first of its kind in Lebanon, Ourabah Haddad said that the economic crisis, the devaluation of the currency, the unprecedented increase in the prices of food and non-food items all affected the livelihoods of Lebanese and Syrians refugees, and making them in need of aid.

She stated that when households do not have enough food or money to buy food, they adopt passive coping to cope with food shortages. These include changing food consumption patterns and quality through purchasing inexpensive foodstuffs or reducing the number of meals or portion sizes of food or meals.

According to statistics, 87 percent of the Lebanese and 96 percent of Syrian refugees resorted to an unhealthy diet.

According to FAO, many things contribute to the rise in food insecurity in Lebanon, including the level of inflation, which is constantly increasing, the decline in purchasing power, especially for low-income people, the decline in job opportunities, and the increase in unemployment, as it increased from 11 percent of the population in 2019 to 30 percent in 2022, among other factors.

Nora Ourabah Haddad added that according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture in Lebanon with technical support from FAO on the impact of successive crises on a sample of farmers, it was found that 94 percent requested immediate assistance.

Additionally, the report recommended several measures, including taking urgent action to meet the needs of the most vulnerable families, identifying the most vulnerable families as a priority to provide them with critical support.

The report also recommends that all partners involved in the follow-up of the provision of humanitarian assistance work hand in hand to closely monitor and assess the situation, adopting a "multi-sectoral approach" to prevent malnutrition, and urged follow-up support to all ministries concerned with food security and public institutions.