Bangladesh

The IPC was first introduced in Bangladesh in 2012 under the IPC Regional Programme. In the same year, the country received bilateral funds from ECHO for the Food Security Cluster and IPC. From 2012 to 2015, the country conducted at least one round of analysis in the disaster and poverty prone districts (administrative level 2) during the agricultural lean season or in a post disaster situation. Later, due to lack of regular data availability, the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Analysis became an ad-hoc analysis, conducted on a need-basis. So far, Bangladesh has conducted five IPC Acute Food Insecurity analyses, including a pilot IPC Acute Malnutrition analysis. The IPC Chronic Food Insecurity Classification was piloted in November 2013 and officially rolled out in 2014. Since then, two rounds of IPC Chronic Food Insecurity analyses have been completed.

Under the Meeting the Under-nutrition Challenge (MUCH) project, the IPC in Bangladesh is hosted by the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU) of the Ministry of Food and the operational support is provided by FAO Bangladesh. The IPC Governance structure consists of three components: the IPC Secretariat at FPMU, the IPC Technical Working Group (IPC TWG) and the IPC Analyst Team. The Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU) of the Ministry of Food is the official Secretariat of IPC.

The IPC National Technical Working Group (TWG) consists of the Government, the UN, and I/NGOs; and the number of member agencies varies between 8 to 12. There are around 10-15 TWG members from various agencies. The agencies that are involved with IPC TWG since the beginning are FPMU/MoFood, FAO, WFP, ACF, OXFAM, HKI, and FSC. The main role of IPC TWG is to support the National Coordinator with the coordination, planning, data preparation and compilation, implementation of IPC activities; to participate in the analysis and advocate for the use of the analysis results.

The results of IPC Acute and Chronic Food Insecurity analyses have been used in a wide range of policy and framework documents, including: the “National Food Policy Plan of Action and Country Investment Plan-2016: Monitoring Report 2016”; the South Asia Humanitarian Implementation Plan (HIP) 2015-16; the Humanitarian Coordination Task Team’s (HCTT) Joint Assessment Report; the August 2016 HCTT “Humanitarian Response Plan, Bangladesh Monsoon Floods”; as well as multiple studies, reports and project proposals compiled by the National Alliance for Risk Reduction, FAO, the Bangladeshi Government, the Food Security Cluster, UNOCHA and various national and international NGOs.

Looking ahead, the IPC TWG plans to include IPC Acute Food Insecurity for vulnerable districts in the country. In 2018, the IPC Global Support Unit plans to support another round of IPC Chronic Food Insecurity analysis.

Country contacts

Duaa Sayed
IPC Regional Coordinator for Asia
FAO-UN FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO RAP)
39 Phra Athit Road, Phranakorn District, Bangkok 10200,Thailand
[email protected]