Oxfam Food Security Assessment Tool for emergency assessments
In times of crisis, it is important to assess needs quickly in order to mount an appropriate and timely response. This tool is designed to guide Food and Nutrition technical staff faced with decision-making during food security related emergencies through the steps of conducting, analysing and using information from emergency assessments in six common types of crisis.
Drought
Learn more about the kinds of information you need to conduct an assessment in a drought emergency.
Governance crisis
Learn more about the kinds of information you need to conduct an assessment in a governance crisis.
Sudden-impact natural disaster
Learn more about the kinds of information you need to conduct an assessment in a sudden-impact natural disaster.
Conflict
Learn more about the kinds of information you need to conduct an assessment in a conflict situation.
Refugees and IDPs
Learn more about the kinds of information you need to conduct an assessment involving refugees and IDPs
Market failure and food price increases
Learn more about the kinds of information you need to conduct an assessment involving market failure and food price rises.
Further information
This tool is not meant to be a manual for assessment; instead, it offers general guidance on the steps that must be followed in organising an assessment, the key questions to be answered for a given situation, and on how to use the results of the assessment to mobilise an effective response.
The steps to assessment outlined for each of six common types of crisis are based on the Oxfam GB draft Guidelines for Emergency Food Security Assessment and Response, and like the guidelines they should be seen as providing support to Oxfam’s Humanitarian Handbook, Oxfam’s Guiding Principles on Response to Food Crises, and the SPHERE Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards for Disaster Response. They also draw from the major classifications of information required for application to the Integrated Food Security and Humanitarian Phase Classification (IPC) system, which Oxfam has adopted as a key framework for linking assessment with effective response.
Oxfam considers food insecurity to be an underlying cause of malnutrition as well as a threat to livelihoods, and takes a livelihoods approach in all of its food security programming. In emergency assessments, taking a livelihoods approach requires assessing both the short-term and long-term risks to lives and livelihoods.
A principle organising framework for all of Oxfam’s food security and livelihoods assessment work, is the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF). This framework provides a logical approach to understanding vulnerability, capacity to respond to shocks, coping mechanisms, and potential outcomes. At its heart is an understanding of livelihood security as being a matter of having access to essential food and nonfood resources. Access is influenced by where people live, the kinds of constraints and opportunities available, the ways in which they are affected by policies, institutions and processes (both formal and informal), and by people’s vulnerability to sudden or slow-onset shocks. People require assistance if their strategies for responding to access constraints are insufficient to enable them to get the resources they require.
To complement the sustainable livelihoods approach to assessment, Oxfam’s Emergency Food Security Team has adopted the Household Economy Approach as a key analytic framework to identify who needs how much of what kind of assistance for how long. This tool follows the general rationale set out by both the SLF and HEA in determining the key questions to be asked.
