International humanitarian food aid in the north-south cooperation: the case of cameroon

C- Categories of Food Aid

Food aid is categorized according to the way it is provided by donors and used by recipient countries. According to the WFP, there are 3 forms of Food Aid: Programme Food Aid, Project Food Aid and Relief or Emergency Food Aid. Each has its own set of donor legislation, procedures, sources of financing and methods of operation.

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International humanitarian food aid in the North-South cooperation: the case of Cameroon 2014

1- Programme Food Aid

Program Food Aid, which was until recently the predominant form of food aid, has no relation to food insecurity or malnutrition; instead it represents a specific in-kind form of economic assistance. Most Program Food Aid is provided on a government-to- government basis and sold in recipient country markets to generate cash. It thereby reduces food import bills and constitutes a balance of payment support to the government's budget. Contrary to another common belief about food aid, Program Food Aid is generally not given freely but is usually sold to the recipient country through concessional financing and export credit guarantees. Recipient countries therefore purchase food aid with money borrowed at lower than market interest rates.

According to Sijm,

Programme Food Aid can be described as food aid meant to support the balance of payments, the government budget, the implementation of structural policy reforms, or the achievement of other general development objectives of recipient countries E...] It is provided as a grant or on soft loan repayment terms exclusively on a bilateral, government-to-government basis.¹¹

Between 1980 and 1992, Programme Food Aid was the most important category of total Food Aid with an average of 5%.

2- Project Food Aid

Project Food Aid, is donated to support specific activities and projects, often related to promoting agricultural or economic development, nutrition and food security, such as food for work and school feeding programs. For Sijm, «Project Food Aid is food aid meant to support specific projects. Its particularly

11 Sijm J., (1997) Food Security and policy interventions, Amsterdam, Thesis Publishers, p.473.

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International humanitarian food aid in the North-South cooperation: the case of Cameroon 2014

includes food-for-work (FFW) projects and supplementary feeding-nutrition projects for young children and other vulnerable groups.»¹²

Clay and Stokke define Project Food Aid as «the supplying of food as a precondition for sustainable development, for example food-for-work programmes, dairy development and nutrition projects for building capital.»¹³

Project Food Aid is mostly distributed directly to the participants involved, but occasionally it is partly monetised to finance some, or all, local project costs. It is usually aimed at transferring income to the poor or at satisfying their minimum national needs in normal years. This type of Food Aid is often disbursed through NGOs or WFP, and is used to support school feeding programmes or FFW schemes.

3- Relief or Emergency Food Aid

Relief, or Emergency Food Aid constituted only a modest part of overall food aid until the 1990s and it is only in the last decade that it has become the major form of food aid. It is distributed for free in countries facing situations of food insecurity. For Sijm, this form of Food Aid

is used for humanitarian purposes in the aftermath of crises caused by natural disasters or conflicts. It is generally related to immediate actions and relief operations of assistance provided for free to refugees and displaced people E...] This type of food aid has become the most important category of the total food aid to sub-Saharan Africa.¹⁴

Relief Food Aid may be provided under government-to-government agreements or through public and private agencies or inter-governmental organisations such as the World Food Programme (WFP), non-governmental

12 Sijm J., (1997) ibid, p.479.

13 Shaw J. and Clay E., (1993) World Food Aid, Tonya, Reed Publishing, p.3.

14 Sijm J., (1997) ibid, p.469.

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International humanitarian food aid in the North-South cooperation: the case of Cameroon 2014

organizations (NGOs) or other multilateral organisations. It is However, a number of countries facing some forms of chronic food insecurity have also become permanent recipients of this form of aid. This last category of Food Aid is the one which interest us in this thesis.

Category Delivery mode		Mt (000)	%
Emergency		2 734	100
	Direct transfer	1 086	40
	Triangular purchase	654	24
	Local purchase	994	36
Project		1 226	100
	Direct transfer	975	80
	Triangular purchase	79	6
	Local purchase	172	14
Programme		108	100
	Direct transfer	104	96
	Triangular purchase	4	4
	Local purchase	-	-

Table 2: 2011 Global Food Aid Deliveries by Category and delivery mode. Source: WFP

The following figures concern the year 2011¹⁵. 67% of food aid delivered was for emergency operations; project food aid accounted for 30% and the remaining 3% was programme food aid. Programme food aid decreased by 59% and project food aid by 4%. The reduction in emergency food aid resulted mainly from a significant decline in direct transfers. 91% of food aid channelled through WFP was delivered for emergencies; the remaining 9% - 224,000 mt - was for project use. In terms of damage caused by natural disasters, 2011 was the costliest year ever; the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March was the single biggest disaster. The largest responses to natural disasters were made for the Horn of Africa drought and flooding in Pakistan and Cambodia.

15 WFP, 2011 Food Aid Flows.

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International humanitarian food aid in the North-South cooperation: the case of Cameroon 2014

Emergency 67%

Programme 3%

Project 30%

Figure 3: 2011 Food Aid deliveries by category. Source: WFP

Emergency food aid fell by 1.6 million mt in 2011, 37% less than in 2010. Emergency food aid for Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East and North Africa accounted for 96% of deliveries. Latin America and the Caribbean received 4%, and Eastern Europe and CIS received negligible quantities. The main deliveries to countries were as follows, by region:

- Sub-Saharan Africa - Ethiopia 37%, Kenya 14%, the Sudan 13% and Somalia 10%;

- Asia - Pakistan 57% and Afghanistan 17%;

- Middle East and North Africa - Occupied Palestinian Territory 43%, Yemen 21% and Libya 17%;

- Latin America and the Caribbean - Haiti 62%, Guatemala 15% and Colombia 15%.

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International humanitarian food aid in the North-South cooperation: the case of Cameroon 2014

II- The legal basis of International Food Aid

In the quest to foster food security there are some key international regulatory mechanisms that address themselves to the topic of food aid. We try to describe these regulatory mechanisms.

A- The Food Aid and Food Assistance Conventions 1- Rationale and origin

The Food Aid Convention (FAC) is arguably the most significant source of international food aid regulation in the global context. The importance of the FAC is that it is the only instrument under international law whereby donor countries have undertaken firm obligations to provide food aid. The FAC forms part of the International Grains Agreement (IGA) of 1995. The sister convention to the FAC is the Grains Trade Convention (GTC). The relationship is important because the existence of the FAC is tied to the existence of the IGA. The treaties are administered by the secretariat of the International Grains Council (IGC) based in London. The current FAC has its roots back in 1967 and its current incarnation is the 1999 version which has been renewed up to the present date. The GTA has a longer history dating back to the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions and the GATT in the late 1940's.

The International Grains Agreement of 1967 was intimately linked to the trading regime and was concluded in the context of the GATT's Kennedy Round. At that time several international commodity agreements were concluded with a view to managing international commodity trade. In the grain sector there was a tightening of grain market supply and thus with stocks available for use as food aid being low, an incentive for food aid donors to share their aid supply loads with other donor countries emerged. This explains the present day linkage between the IGC and the WTO¹⁶ and the present

16 The 1994 WTO Agreement on Agriculture still makes direct reference to the FAC in its Article 10.4.

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International humanitarian food aid in the North-South cooperation: the case of Cameroon 2014

sequencing of negotiations in the Fac to follow in tandem but subsequent to those of the Doha Development Agenda, as elaborated in paragraph 2.2.5. Historically the FAC took its negotiating lead from the GATT, and today this remains the position with the FAC now taking this lead from the WTO.

Related to the FAC, the GTC covers trade in wheat, maize, barley, sorghum and more recently oil seeds and rice. The GTC aims to foster international cooperation in the grain trade; to promote expansion, openness and fairness in the grains sector; to contribute to grain market stability and to enhance world food security. These aims are operationalised through market transparency, information collation, discussion and analysis as regards the international grain markets.