Social Cohesion and Food Security: Using the Moldova 2022 Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index to inform how the United Nations World Food Programme’s activities can sustain social cohesion

This research aims to use data from the Moldova SCORE 2022 survey to strengthen the United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP) evidence basis in Moldova, informing how WFP’s activities can sustain social cohesion between refugees and the host community, and whether WFP’s food security interventions can potentially contribute to social stability in general. This research is particularly prescient given the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to WFP in 2020 “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a diving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”i. The research subsequently set out to identify linkages between food security and social cohesion in Moldova by answering two overarching research questions:

1. How does food security influence horizontal social cohesion, particularly regarding attitudes towards refugees from Ukraine?

2. How is access to resources linked to social stability and vertical cohesion?