Key terms
- Cash-based transfer and cash-based intervention
- are used interchangeably to refer to all programmes that provide cash or vouchers to beneficiaries to enable them to purchase goods or services directly. In humanitarian contexts, the terms refer to cash or vouchers allocated to individuals, households or community recipients; they do not include financial allocations to governments and other State actors.
- Food access
- means that individuals of different ages and gender, from diverse backgrounds, are able regularly to acquire sufficient quantities of appropriate foods to provide a nutritious diet, through purchase, home production, barter, gifts, borrowing, or food aid (SDG Target 2.1). Persons with disabilities may not have access to a reliable food supply or a well-balanced diet.
- Food availability
- refers to the presence, consistently, of sufficient quantities of food to meet the needs of a given area. It may be achieved through domestic production or imported food aid.
- Food consistency
- refers to the density, firmness or viscosity of food that is provided to children and adults, including older persons who find eating difficult. The consistency of a food determines how easy or difficult that food is to chew and swallow. The main categories of food consistency are unmodified regular foods, soft foods (such as banana), minced and moist foods, and blended foods.
- Food security
- is achieved when a population has physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meets its food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life (SDG Targets 2.3, 2.4).
- Food stability
- refers to both the availability and access dimensions of food security; it highlights the need of a population to be food secure over time.
- Food utilization
- refers to the nutritional effects of processing, cooking and consuming foods. It covers cooking, storage and hygiene practices, individuals’ health, water and sanitation, and the feeding and sharing practices of households.
- Food assistance for training/assets
- describes initiatives that aim to meet the immediate food needs of an affected population through cash, voucher or food transfers, while building or rehabilitating assets that improve long-term food security and resilience.
- In-kind assistance
- refers to the direct provision of goods (food) or services to beneficiaries. In-kind assistance remains an important solution in crisis situations.
- Livelihood
- refers to the means by which an individual secures the necessities of life. It covers a wide range of different forms of work, which may be remunerated in kind (for example, food-for-work), in cash or as a salary.
- Malnutrition
- is a physiological condition caused by inadequate, unbalanced or excessive consumption of macro- and/or micro-nutrients. Expressions of malnutrition include undernutrition, overnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiency.
- Nutritional status
- is the physiological state of an individual that results from the relationship between nutrient intake and requirements and the body’s ability to digest, absorb and use those nutrients.