Food and nutrition security (FNS) is a basic human right and a prerequisite for development. More than 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. In most cases, food and nutrition (FN) insecurity is caused by structural factors such as poverty, food production not keeping pace with population growth, natural resource degradation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the neglect of rural areas in infrastructure and public service provision. Furthermore, structural FN insecurity is often aggravated by man-made and natural disasters.

Tackling the problem of FN insecurity requires appropriate interventions at all levels (macro, meso and micro), taking into account all the factors that have an impact on access to food, food availability, use and utilisation, and stability. For more than 30 years, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH has been providing support to improve the FN situation in many countries. Apart from other types of support in the field of FNS (e.g. integrated food security projects (IFSPs), emergency and refugee food security (FS) operations), several specific FS policy advisory projects (FSPAPs) were introduced some years ago with the aim of ensuring that FNS issues are duly considered at the institutional and policy level, and in order to support governments in the formulation and implementation of food security policies and strategies.

This summary report highlights the major findings of the Lessons Learned Study of the food security policy advisory projects that were conducted in Cambodia , Ethiopia, and Mozambique at the end of 2005, before the respective projects in these three countries had come to an end. The particular focus of the study is on those aspects which are of general importance for the integration of food and nutrition security (FNS) issues into future development corporation and technical corporation (TC) projects and programmes.