The first IPC Acute Food Insecurity analysis in Ecuador has covered all 24 provinces, revealing that approximately 2.7 million people are expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or higher) during the projection period (September 2024 - March 2025). These people will require urgent intervention, especially those households that depend on the sale of labour, mainly linked to the agricultural sector, and face depletion of food stocks and deprivation of essential needs such as water and basic sanitation.

The food insecurity situation is due to key factors such as high food prices, violence and insecurity, low household incomes and unemployment. 

• Promote the timely delivery of the human development voucher and other MIES programmes and services to strengthen social protection, humanitarian food assistance, and direct and indirect transfers to beneficiaries, through a mechanism that responds to basic needs and promotes the creation of synergies.
• Prepare an immediate inter-institutional response plan to address populations in Crisis and Emergency (IPC Phase 3 or higher), with differentiated actions at the institutional level to reduce food consumption gaps and protect livelihoods.
• Prioritise the vulnerable population that is acutely food insecure, implementing interventions that reduce the conditions associated with the food crisis.
• Establish ongoing monitoring of aid and government programmes and projects that promote livelihood protection and the generation of coping capacities among small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs.
• Maintain a differentiated response plan for the country's provinces with the greatest vulnerability to recurrent climatic and socio-political events, contributing to their recovery, identifying immediate needs and with prompt local solutions.
• Encourage the creation of medium-term response mechanisms that strengthen resilience with the support of cooperation agencies and government assistance.
• Link the different early warning information systems on food and nutrition security, aligning them with common objectives to encourage coordinated and focused international and governmental cooperation actions.