Crisis management and post-emergency work

To help rural communities overcome humanitarian crises, AVSF has two objectives: to improve prevention and resilience in communities that regularly experience catastrophes, and to restore the victims’ production capacity.

In addition to suffering from the consequences of armed conflict, rural communities are particularly vulnerable to and regularly confronted by natural disasters and climate crises (whether earthquake, hurricane, drought, flood or insect invasion). Faced with those catastrophes, the most urgent thing is to first quickly restore families’ production capacity so they can feed themselves and support their vital economic needs. That’s the case in central and northern Mali, which is subject to recurrent climate crises and armed conflict. Since 2012, AVSF has regularly supported smallholder and livestock-farmer organizations by distributing seed and tool kits, animals and livestock food. We supported the relaunch and still support a vital mobile health service for humans and animals in pastoral communities. Lastly, we assist and strengthen local authorities in their capacity to invest in the renovation or construction of infrastructure for production: vaccination stations, wells, boreholes, irrigation canals, buildings for storage and processing (such as mini-dairies), livestock markets, etc. Since 2018, as part of the “Trois Frontières” program supported by the French Development Agency and the Crisis Center of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, AVSF supports the relaunch of several agropastoral supply chains and strategic fishing supply chains as a way of ensuring the food security of local communities and the collective and fair management of local resources, and as a way of generating income and jobs (particularly for young people who may be tempted to join the armed conflict and jihadism) and promoting social cohesion in fragile areas.

In the departments of Cauca and Nariño in southern Colombia, the new ECOPAZ project aims to stabilize and build peace and good governance in rural areas that are particularly affected by the internal armed conflict.

Supported by the European Union and local authorities (indigenous councils and local communities), the project seeks to strengthen the political, technical and managerial capacities of 35 smallholder community organizations in indigenous communities and communities of African descent. The initiatives focus on promoting agroecology, and the organizations themselves are involved in the design, negotiation and joint execution of community-development plans.

The second major field of action for AVSF is to improve prevention and resilience in communities that are regularly affected by those crises. In Ecuador and Peru, AVSF is involved in the INUNRED program to prevent the risk of flooding, which regularly causes damage to agricultural areas along the coasts of the Piura and Manabi regions. The program focuses mainly on preventive land management with local communities and smallholder organizations, and the implementation of agroecology and diversified production systems, which are more resilient to flooding. The project is supported by ECHO (European humanitarian office) and carried out in partnership with the NGOs CESA and PROGRESO from MOABI Group (formerly AVSF Group).