In the face of climate change-induced droughts, vulnerable regions encounter severe threats to food security, demanding urgent humanitarian assistance. This paper introduces a causal inference framework for the Horn of Africa, aiming to assess the impact of cash-based interventions on food crises. Our contributions include identifying causal relationships within the food security system, harmonizing a comprehensive database including socio-economic, weather and remote sensing data, and estimating the causal effect of humanitarian interventions on malnutrition. On a country level, our results revealed no significant effects, likely due to limited sample size, suboptimal data quality, and an imperfect causal graph resulting from our limited understanding of multidisciplinary systems like food security. Instead, on a district level, results revealed significant effects, further implying the context-specific nature of the system. This underscores the need to enhance data collection and refine causal models with domain experts for more effective future interventions and policies, improving transparency and accountability in humanitarian aid.

翻译：面对气候变化引发的干旱，脆弱地区的粮食安全受到严重威胁，亟需紧急人道主义援助。本文提出面向非洲之角的因果推断框架，旨在评估现金干预措施对粮食危机的实际影响。我们的贡献包括：识别粮食安全系统中的因果关系，整合涵盖社会经济、气象和遥感数据的综合数据库，以及估算人道主义干预对营养不良的因果效应。在国家层面，研究结果未显示显著效果——这很可能源于样本量有限、数据质量欠佳，以及因我们对该领域（如粮食安全这类多学科系统）认知不足而构建的不完备因果图。然而在地区层面，结果揭示了显著效果，进一步说明了该系统的情境依赖性。这表明必须加强数据收集工作，并与领域专家共同完善因果模型，以制定更有效的未来干预措施和政策，提升人道主义援助的透明度与问责性。