ISLAMABAD: The Japanese government on Wednesday announced its support to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) for ‘seasonal livelihood programming’ in the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

The announcement was made by Ambassador of Japan Takashi Kurai and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Secretary for Livelihood and Production Department Abdul Latif at a ceremony here.

Ambassador Kurai said: “We need to start paying more attention in our assistance for former Fata to development support rather than humanitarian to eradicate poverty, end malnutrition and improve the quality of lives of people there. We hope that this development intervention through WFP will help them increase their self-resilience and protect their livelihoods,” he said.

The Japanese government has been a key partner in ensuring food security and livelihood for the vulnerable people in the tribal districts. Extreme weather events are expected to exacerbate the already tough living conditions, and crop failures can further aggravate conflicts, said WFP Country Director Finbar Curran. 

“Seasonal livelihood programming will help support people where the pressures of climate and conflict intersect besides strengthening government plans and coordination,” he said.

Geographically, these tribal districts are vulnerable to disasters with the poorly constructed mud and stone houses and other weak infrastructure often washed away by rains and flash flooding. Crisis preparedness capacities need to be boosted to reduce the time it takes for families to recover and for systems to be restored.

The seasonal livelihood programming is a risk-informed planning tool to identify interventions suited to a variety of contexts and time frames. It provides the foundations for resilience planning and brings humanitarian and development interventions together by combining seasonal, livelihood, gender, crisis and programme aspects. Communities, government and partners are consulted to design cross-cutting plans.

The programme will also pave the way for the digitalisation of information gathering and the development of a centralised data hub. This will include the refinement and cleaning of data from key thematic areas and linking to the Decision Support System of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Secretary Latif said the government of Japan had been an active partner of Pakistan in supporting the socio-economic development of the people in the former tribal regions. The consultative process will help agencies and the government to establish priorities and make plans to address challenges in disaster preparedness and mitigation to sustain development gains and minimise losses to the country’s GDP.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2018