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IPC for Decision Makers

The IPC is designed from the perspective of decision-making. Thus, rather than ‘pushing’ complex information to decision makers, the IPC is demand driven – taking stock of the essential aspects of situation analysis that decision makers consistently require, and focusing on providing that information in the most reliable, consistent and accessible way.

In the Analysis-Response Continuum illustrated above, the IPC is instrumental for the Situation Analysis stage, as its key strength lies in identifying the general “big-picture” situation, focusing on severity, size and nature of food insecurity and malnutrition conditions. IPC products have been used and designed mainly to guide funding requests and initial planning, such as the size of the intervention, priority geographical areas and type of intervention required.

In particular, the IPC aims to help decision makers in:

  • assessing current response shortfalls, by providing information on the number of food insecure or acutely malnourished people found, even after accounting for impacts of delivery of any assistance;
  • planning the size of response, by providing information on the number of food insecure or acutely malnourished people that would be found in the future in absence of humanitarian assistance;
  • identifying target areas for response, by providing IPC Maps classifying areas for acute food insecurity and acute malnutrition; and
  • planning a comprehensive strategy of response, informing short-term objectives through the IPC Acute Food Insecurity and IPC Acute Malnutrition classifications; medium to long-term objectives through the IPC Chronic Food Insecurity; and linking the types of responses through IPC Combined Communication.

Although it mainly provides protocols for Situation Analyses, the IPC can also be the platform for later subsequent response planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation. In an effort to offer a comprehensive approach and strengthen response analysis within the Humanitarian Programme Cycle, the IPC process takes into account the policy making calendar and aligns to it as much as possible. For example, in countries where IPC protocols for the Acute Food Insecurity classification or the Acute Malnutrition classification are used, the calendar of data collection and analysis implementation activities for IPC is tailored to the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) process, so that IPC results can be better used to inform the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP).

To learn more about how IPC supports decision making, consult or download the IPC Manual V 2.0.

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