The
World Food Programme
About the World Food Programme
At
the frontline to wipe out world hunger is a United Nations
organisation called The World Food Programme (WFP). It became
operational in 1963 and is now the world's biggest international
food aid organisation. The World Food Programme vision is
a world where every man, woman and child has access at all
times to the food they need for an active and healthy life.
Without this food, there can be no sustainable peace, no democracy
and definitely no development.
The
World Food Programme has emergency and development projects
in over eighty countries worldwide and have more than 5,000
staff. During the past thirty years the World Food Programme
has invested about $24 billion and more than 43 million tons
of food to fight hunger worldwide. Over 40 percent of this
went to sub-Saharan Africa, almost 30 per cent to South and
East Asia, and about 14 per cent to North Africa and the Middle
East, 8 per cent went to Latin America and the Caribbean,
and 5 per cent to Europe and the CIS.
The
World Food PRogramme also uses food aid in development activities
that promote self-reliance among those who are often bypassed
by usual development. WFP food aid is provided to the least
developed and low-income, food-deficit countries and they
focus mainly on the most vulnerable members of society, that
is, women, children and the elderly.
WFP
works though three main channels. Food-for-Life provides fast
and efficient, life-sustaining relief to people caught up
in humanitarian crises. Food-For-Growth targets vulnerable
people at the most critical times of their lives -babies,
schoolchildren, pregnant and breast-feeding women and also
the elderly. Food aid is used as 'preventative medicine' which
insures a future healthy development. The last channel is
Food-For-Work programmes which aim to help the hungry poor
become self-reliant and build assets. Workers are usually
paid with food to build roads or ports in Ghana and Lesotho,
terrace hillsides in China or Guatemala, repair dykes in Bangladesh,
replant forests in Ethiopia, or repair irrigation canals in
Somalia. In its development work the World Food Programme
gives priority to disaster prevention, emergency preparation
and mitigation, and post-disaster rehabilitation.
Ten
years ago, two out of three tons of the food aid provided
by the World Food Programme was used for helping people become
self-sufficient. Today, that is reversed; 80 percent of WFP
resources are used for victims of man-made disasters.
The
World Food Programme is funded with voluntary donations and
its budget is based on performance, linked to the tonnage
of food that it moves. Contributions in cash or commodities
or services to the WFP come from donor nations, inter-governmental
bodies such as the EU, corporations and individuals. WFP has
the smallest headquarters staff and the lowest percentage
of budget devoted to its administration, and averages only
9 per cent of any UN agency.
The
World Food Programme is the United Nation's largest supporter
of development projects involving and benefiting poor women;
the largest provider of grant assistance for the protection
of the environment and improvement; and the largest purchaser
of food and services in developing countries and the major
supporter of South-South trade.
The World Food Programme website is at http://www.wfp.org.
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