Guatemala

The IPC was first introduced in Guatemala in 2012 through a Level 1 IPC Acute Food Insecurity training, and later in 2013 with an IPC Chronic Food Insecurity pilot exercise. It was not until 2017 that the country revived its interest in the use of the IPC, welcoming IPC activities such as an awareness-raising event, an IPC training workshop and the first official IPC Acute Food Insecurity analysis.

SESAN, the national Food Security office, has led the IPC initiative at national and regional level and aims to produce quality analyses as reference examples for the rest of the region. For this purpose, SESAN has suggested tailored trainings and consolidating a new Technical Working Group (TWG) to guarantee the quality and sustainability of this process. Other key partners supporting the initiative include SICA (PROGRESAN), FEWS NET, WFP, FAO, ACF, and international and local NGOs.

In the context of the decision making and humanitarian response review, the results of the 2017 IPC Acute Food Insecurity analysis were presented to the National Council of Food and Nutrition Security - CONASAN - to ensure needs-based programming.

Looking ahead, the national IPC TWG continues working towards: institutionalizing and increasing ownership of partners and government through awareness raising and capacity development; formalizing the national TWG’s Terms of Reference with formal inclusion of IPC roles and responsibilities of key partners; prioritizing efforts to increase awareness of the applicability of IPC information among mid- to senior-level decision makers; and focusing on conducting an IPC Chronic Food Insecurity analysis for improved decision making on resilience and disaster risk reduction programmes.