The focus of humanitarian assistance in conflict has understandably been on life-saving interventions. Yet conflict-related emergencies also have serious impacts on people’s livelihoods. Livelihood strategies become extremely restricted and may involve considerable risks to personal safety.

In these circumstances, livelihood interventions are an important complement to humanitarian relief, particularly in protracted conflicts, where relief often declines over time and there may be opportunities to support new livelihood strategies or find other ways to help conflict-affected people meet their basic needs.

This Network Paper reviews food security and livelihoods programming in conflict. The aim is to gather information on the types of food security and livelihoods interventions that are being implemented in conflict situations, their objectives, when particular livelihood interventions are appropriate, what the constraints have been in implementing them and how these constraints can be overcome.