Global Performance Report 2019

The Global Performance Report 2019 outlines and reflects on Action Against Hunger’s global achievements and reach in 2019.

Published: 2019

In 2019, Action Against Hunger continued to provide effective assistance to affected populations around the world. We operated in 46 countries, delivering assistance in the sectors of nutrition, health, WaSH (water, hygiene and sanitation), food security and livelihoods (FSL), disaster risk reduction (DRR), care practices and mental health.

In all our interventions, we endeavoured to respect our key principles: independence, neutrality, transparency, free and direct access to victims, non-discrimination, professionalism. In 2019, we increased the number of interventions by 38 per cent, delivering 654 projects against 473 in 2018. Overall, 40 per cent of projects implemented were multi-sectoral, having components in health and nutrition, WaSH, FSL, care practices, mental health, DRR, advocacy and food assistance.

Our main objective to address and alleviate hunger brought our actions to reach over 17 million people in 2019, with a slight decrease of 18 per cent compared to 2018. Overall, we reached 40 per cent of the beneficiaries (6,983,097 individuals) in our identified high burden countries while 60 per cent (10,453,254) in the rest of the countries where we intervene.
Since 2015, we have been monitoring the indicators of our International Strategic Plan 2016-2020 to reach our intended targets: to reduce mortality in children under 5 years old; reduce the prevalence of chronic and acute undernutrition; increase coverage of programmes to treat severe acute undernutrition; to cover unmet needs within the scope of Action Against Hunger expertise during emergencies and improve programme and strategies on undernutrition.

We contributed to reduce child mortality in ten selected high burden countries. In 2019, we provided support to reduce child mortality in Kita (Mali), in Guidimakha (Mauritania), Keita-bouza and Diffa (Niger) and in Borno and Yobe (Nigeria). Such improvements were possible because we increased the number of health and education sessions by 84 per cent, and we increased the number of care practices and nutrition/health projects, respectively by 10 and 24 per cent since last year. In 2019, 6 million people benefitted from our nutrition interventions and almost 3 million from our health support.
We dedicated our efforts to reduce prevalence of chronic and acute undernutrition in our programming areas. In 2019, ten out of nineteen districts where we work have already met the reduction target and they are: Diapaga, Fada N’gourma, Est, Bahr El Gazel, Kayes, Kita, Tombouctu, Hod El Charghi, Yobe and Aweil East. To achieve this, Action Against Hunger continued to provide a wide variety of multisectoral programmes to address factors that affect malnutrition prevalence. In 2019, we distributed 18,194 metric tons of food aid and 42 million Euro of cash assistance, we supported over 215,666 people with our disaster risk reduction (DRR) and disaster risk management (DRM) programmes and we reached 5.6 million of people through our WaSH-related interventions with a strong focus in the Middle East.

We worked to increase the coverage of programmes to treat severe acute malnutrition (SAM) to reach our target of 60 per cent by 2020.

In 2019, only three coverage surveys were completed in two of the high burden countries (in the Guidimakha district in Mauritania and in the Borno and Yobe states in Nigeria), suggesting the that coverage surveys are not prioritised in the monitoring of CMAM programmes. In Guidimakha and MMC/Jere coverage substantially increased while in Central Yobe (Nigeria) the coverage slightly decrease compared to 2018. In terms of CMAM admissions, Action Against Hunger’s country programmes reported a total of 642,000 in 2019. The country reporting the biggest increase in SAM treatment admissions was Pakistan with admissions increasing to nearly 45,000 in 2019, followed by Ethiopia (from 15,000 to nearly 20,000), Central African Republic and Cameroon.

In 2019, across 21 countries, Action Against Hunger responded to 43 emergencies, human-made and natural, demonstrating our comprehensive commitment. In over half of these crises (55.6%), we responded within 72 hours. Approximately 20 per cent of our emergency interventions were dedicated to the West Africa region. The Emergency Pool was deployed 18 times to 12 countries in 2019. These countries included: Cameroon, CAR, Chad, Colombia, DRC, Iraq, Lebanon, Mozambique, Niger, Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPT), Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

We work in places where the world’s most vulnerable people live and where contexts are particular challenging. In 2019, Action Against Hunger experienced 340 security incidents affecting its staff, a consistent increase from 286 in 2018. A total of ten security incidents were reported to have the highest level of seriousness (level 5), doubling the cases compared to 2018. The most notable increases in security incidents in 2019 occurred in Ethiopia (18 to 45) and South Sudan (12 to 27). To ensure proper management of security, we delivered security training to a total of 1,505 staff.

Logistics and information management systems are key to deliver strong humanitarian and development actions. In 2019, Action Against Hunger managed €151.1 million for its logistics and supply chain. Despite a slight decrease in the volume spent in 2018, some countries experienced significant increase as Pakistan (+356%), Jordan (+136%), Iraq (+153%), Yemen (+102%) and Bangladesh (+52%). The utilisation of innovative approaches as per vehicle tracker systems, framework agreements with external services and digitalisation have improved our ways to work and efficiency.

As technical expert and leader in the field of undernutrition, Action Against Hunger continues to put a strong emphasis on research and innovation. In 2019, we conducted 72 research projects, against 25 in 2018, and we ensured an uptake strategy for a quarter of them. Projects were implemented in 25 counties, with a prevalence released in Africa. The increase in the number of projects translated in a growth in the volume of ongoing multi-year research portfolio to €14.2 million, compared to €12.9 million in 2018. The collaboration with academic and research institutions as well as a range of non-governmental organisations, public and private institutions and United Nations agencies also continued. In 2019, we collaborated with 58 partners.

Action Against Hunger’s total revenue of €450.2 million in 2019 exceeded all previous records, surpassing the figures in 2018 by €25.7 million. Private restricted fundraising increased overall from 2018 by 7.2 per cent. Unrestricted income remains our largest source of private revenue, comprising 84.0 per cent of private funding (€74.4million) in 2019. In 2019 Action Against Hunger increased the revenue from public restricted funding by €23.4 million over 2018, with total public revenues of €356.1 million. Higher revenue in 2019 allowed Action Against Hunger to deliver 654 projects against 473 in 2018. For every one euro we spent across the network, 86.6 cents were dedicated to programmatic activities.

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