WFP Iraq Country Brief, June 2022

Operational Updates

• In June, WFP provided cash and food assistance to 182,664 internally displaced persons (IDPs), 66,563 refugees, and 3,810 people from vulnerable communities through resilience building initiatives.

• WFP is in the final implementation stages of its resilience-building and livelihood activities. In preparation for the 2022/2023 round of projects, a series of consultations with Government of Iraq entities, academia and private sector are being undertaken to inform and enhance project design, data collection and socio-economic mapping.

• WFP also participated in the launch of a series of Climate Action panels held in the Station Foundation for Entrepreneurship - one of Iraq’s lead co-working spaces - with panellists from non-governmental organizations, academia and the civil society, tying in with the ‘World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.’ The panel focused on Youth and Climate Change, raising awareness on the potential avenues of collaboration to counter the adverse effects of climate change on Iraq.

• Under the National School Feeding Programme, WFP held meetings in Wasit, Anbar, Salah al-Din and Qadisiya governorates to gather data and lessonslearned from the implementation of the National School Feeding Programme alongside the Ministry of Education, Directorates of Education and cooperating partners. Outcomes of the meetings will be incorporated into future implementation of the School Feeding programme for the academic year 2022/2023.

• WFP is conducting a targeting exercise across its entire beneficiary base to ensure that the most vulnerable families who are unable to survive without assistance continue to receive support to meet their needs.
  
  Results will be verified and issued once the targeting exercise is concluded.

• WFP Representative, Mr. Ally Raza Qureshi, attended the HiTex 2022, Iraq’s largest technology exhibition held in Erbil. Mr. Qureshi participated as a panellist in a session on the “Role of Business Incubators in Enhancing Tech Entrepreneurship”, which aligned with WFP’s priority to promote food security and livelihoods in Iraq through support to the youth, who MoU will serve as the framework for technical cooperation on the digitalization of the Single Registry.

• WFP’s ongoing collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Social Protection led to the creation of the Social Protection Sector Wide Coordination Committee (SPCC), which will promote the joint work by different key actors towards achieving the shared objectives of reforming the country’s social protection schemes to best serve the most vulnerable groups of Iraq’s community. The SPCC will serve as a consultation platform to a large number of stakeholders involved in Social Protection reform and relies on the combined expertise of the three UN agencies.