Addressing the impacts of COVID-19 in food crises: April-December 2020. FAO's component of the Global COVID-19 Humanitarian Response Plan

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is particularly concerned about the potential impacts of the virus and related containment efforts on food security and livelihoods in contexts of high vulnerability and where populations are already experiencing food crises. Experience from previous crises, particularly from the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa in 2014, has indicated the significant impact of movement restrictions and disease containment efforts on food production and access, and the importance of maintaining and upscaling humanitarian food security interventions for the most vulnerable populations, alongside the health sector's efforts to avert disease spread. Within the framework of the United Nations (UN) Global COVID-19 Humanitarian Response Plan, FAO has reviewed its ongoing humanitarian/ resilience programming and analysed the potential impacts of the virus in order to ensure continued support to the most vulnerable and anticipatory actions to address the secondary effects of the virus.