Food Aid and Dependency: Implications for Emergency Food Security Assessments

Discussions on food aid and dependency often draw on what appears to be a broad body of evidence, but closer inspection reveals that much of this does not in fact demonstrate a causal link between the two. This desk review has three objectives: (i) to identify the pathways through which negative dependency might arise; (ii) to outline how the targeting and management of food aid might affect the likelihood of negative dependency as a result of emergency operations or follow-on protracted relief and recovery operations; and (iii) to suggest indicators that assessment teams might employ in context-sensitive evaluations to reduce the risk of fostering negative dependency through food aid.