WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME (WFP)HEADQUARTERSVia Cesare Giullio Viola Telephone: [39](06)6-5131 68/70 Parco dei Medici Facsimile: [39](06)659-0632 00148 Rome [39](06)6513-2840 Italy E-Mail: wfpinfo@wfp.org Internet: www.wfp.org Executive Director: ... James T. MORRIS Deputy Executive Director: ... Namanga A. NGONGI Chief of Public Affairs: ... Trevor ROWE Senior Officials Assistant Executive Director: ... Jean-Jacques GRAISSE Assistant Executive Director for Administration: ... Ms. Jessie MABUTAS Regional Director, Asia and Eastern Europe Region: ... John POWELL Director, Transport and Logistics Division: ... Ramiro LOPEZ da Silva Regional Director, Latin America and Caribbean Region: ... Francisco ROQUE-CASTRO Regional Director, Middle East and North Africa Region: ... Khaled ADLY Director, Strategy and Policy Division: ... Ms. Diane SPEARMAN Regional Director, Africa Region: ... Manuel ARANDA da Silva Director, Resources and External Relations Division: ... Ms. Valerie SEQUEIRA Deputy Director, Operations Department: ... Jamie WICKENS Director, Office of the Executive Director: ... Ms. Zoraida MESA Director, Office of Evaluation: ... Alan WILKINSON Acting Director, Human Resources Division: ... Mohamed SALEHEEN LANGUAGES: Arabic, English, French, SpanishESTABLISHMENT AND FUNCTIONSWFP’s mission is: 1) to save lives in refugee and other emergency situations; 2) to improve the nutrition and quality of life of the most vulnerable at critical times in their lives; and 3) help build assets and promote the self-reliance of poor people and communities, particularly through labour-intensive works and programmes. WFP emergency aid provides immediate and vital relief in a crisis. Its development aid attacks the root causes of poverty and builds capacity. Through relief and development aid together, WFP’s goal remains the eradication of hunger world-side. Without food, there can be no guaranteed peace, no democracy and no development. WFP distributes food rations to pay workers to rehabilitate, renovate and build facilities that help the entire community. It offers food as an incentive to pregnant mothers and nursing mothers to attend mother and infant care clinics where they receive care that is vital to their future well-being. It proves school lunches to improve the nutrition of children while promoting education. In the words of Catherine Bertini, WFP’s Executive Director, “Food saves lives, but it can also be a tool to build better lives”. In 2000, WFP brought help and hope to 83 million people caught up in the ever-widening net of poverty, natural disasters, and conflict. The victims were often women, children and the poverty-stricken, those least equipped to look after themselves. It was a tough and busy year but the use of contingency planning methods meant WFP was better prepared than ever before. Compared to 1999, WFP support for victims of sudden natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes rose by 19 per cent, and by 12 per cent for drought and crop failure. These categories now account for a third of all WFP food aid. A range of scientific experts forecast that the future will likely bring more natural disasters and their damage will be greater as people's vulnerability increases. WFP assistance to victims of conflict and civil unrest increased by 7 per cent compared with last year and now accounts for more than half of total expenditure. In Africa, drought in the Horn and continued strife and political instability in countries such as Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Angola pushed up the continent's overall food needs by a shocking 40 per cent from 1999. In Asia, natural disasters were primarily responsible for keeping food aid needs high. Floods along the Mekong Valley, drought in Central and Western Asia and chronic food shortages in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea brought widespread suffering. Overall, WFP shipped 3.661 million tons of food worldwide, an increase of three per cent from the previous year and only slightly less than the record high of 1992. WFP received US$1.7 billion or 11 percent more resources compared to 1999. These figures hide a worrying long-term concern as resources for development activities continued to decline. Shipments of development food were at the same level as 1967 and this trend must be reversed if WFP is to combat the threat of world hunger. WFP logistics teams work small miracles. Some 40 ships loaded with food aid are at sea at any given time and can be diverted when an emergency strikes, but delivering the food to remote and landlocked areas is often a problem. In the Caucasus, WFP emergency logistics teams effectively revamped and upgraded the entire transport infrastructure of the region, even providing diesel locomotives from Russia to Georgia and Armenia to move food inland. In another emergency operation, they piloted barges loaded with tons of supplies up the White Nile through hostile territory to southern Sudan. Where nothing better was available, they have turned to canoes and donkey carts. The same principle applies to equipment. If all else fails, logistics officers have been known to use a car’s rear vision mirror to signal an aircraft to a drop zone. WFP's cumulative commitments for relief and development projects from 1962 to 2000 amounted to around US$27.8 billion. Of this US$12.5 billion was fo sub-Saharan Africa, US$8.1 billion for South and East Asia, US$3 billion for North Africa and Middle East, US$2.2 billion for Latin america and the Caribbean and US$2.0 billion for Europe and the CIS. All contributions to WFP are voluntary. They come from donor nations, inter-governmental bodies such as the European Union (EU), Corporations and individuals. Contributions are either in commodities, cash or services. WFP's Global Activities WFP is also the UN's largest supporter of development projects involving and benefitting poor women, the largest provider of grant assistance for environmental protection and improvement, the largest purchaser of food and services in developing countries, and thus the major supporter of South-South trade in the UN system. Convinced that women are the Programme's most important allies in the fight against poverty and hunger, WFP focuses much of its resources on helping women to help themselves - and their families. WFP distributes food through the senior female member of a household whenever possible. It enlists local women to help in planning, managing and monitoring food aid programs in refugee and displaced persons' camps and in rural communities alike. It also makes sure that women participate fully in its food-for-work projects. Some WFP projects revolve entirely around women, like a highly successful initiative in Pakistan in which WFP encourages families to send their daughters to school by offering a free five-liter can of cooking oil for each month of attendance. WFP’s commitment to women survived the Taliban take-over of Kabul in September of 1996. When authorities halted projects that directly benefited Afghan women, the women themselves joined WFP in a protest that convinced the Taliban to relent and allow the resumption of women-only projects, such as bakeries run by widows to provide bread to the needy at subsidized prices. The bakeries’ project is an example of the way WFP goes about helping people to become stronger and to achieve self-reliance. WFP projects not only assist victims of war and natural disasters but also some of the world’s most disadvantaged - chronic victims of poverty and hunger. Ninety percent of the Programme’s development funds go to the low-income food deficit countries. Food-for-work projects have paid workers to build roads and ports in Ghana, repair dikes in North Korea and Vietnam, terrace hillsides in China and the Andes, and replant forests in Ethiopia and Haiti. In 2000, challenging operations for WFP were: Natural Disasters
Civil Conflict
STRUCTUREUntil the end of 1996, WFP was governed by the Committee on Food Aid Policies and Programmes. The Committee has since been transformed into the WFP Executive Board in line with the provisions of the General Assembly Resolution 48/162. The Board consists of 36 members who serve three-year terms and are eligible for re-election. The Executive Board provides a forum for inter-governmental consultation and on national food aid programs and policies; reviews trends in food aid requirements and availabilities; and formulates proposals for effective coordination of multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental food aid programs, including emergency aid. The Executive Director, who is responsible for the management and administration of the Programme, is appointed jointly by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Director-General of the Food and Agricultural Organization, in consultation with the WFP Executive Board. GENERAL PUBLICATIONSWorld Food Programme Annual Report; Tackling Hunger in a World of Plenty: Tasks Ahead for Food Aid; Ending the Inheritance of Hunger: Food Aid for Human Growth; The Hunger Trap; Enabling Development Information Services: INTERFAIS Food Aid Monitoring and Information Network (FAMINET), based on the Food Aid Monitor and produced by WFP's International Food Aid Information System Videos: Tackling Hunger; Women Eat Last; A Test of Time UPDATED: October 10, 2002
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