Committee: World Food Programme (WFP)

  Photograph by Amjad Jamal

Flood victims in Rahim Yar Khan, a city in the south of Punjab Province, Pakistan, receive rations from the UN World Food Programme (WFP), including wheat flour. It is estimated 17 million people in Pakistan have been affected by monsoon floods, the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.  15 August 2010  Rahim Yar Khan, Pakistan

In the United Nations, there are many debates on stability. Stability of governments, of natural resources, and even the stability of human migrations. But perhaps the most important of all is the stability of food. When drought strikes in a country and threatens food crops, how will the UN respond? Or if rising food prices threaten the livelihood of thousands of farmers in poor rural areas? How will the UN tackle the problem of lack of education with respect to effective agarian production or conservation? These instances may seem disconnected, but they all fall under a very important function of the UN – food stabilization. This is the job of the World Food Programme.

The WFP describes itself as “the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide” (“Our Work”). More broadly, the WFP will be doing one of two types of operations in a region: emergency relief, and long-term sustainability relief. Before providing humanitarian aid, the WFP will be tasked by the main body of the UN to assess the situation in an area. For example, even though the WFP fed more than 1 million children in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, disaster assessment took three days to complete. Now why does the WFP delay aid? First, the WFP has to answer some qustions of its own: “How does the crisis situation compare with pre-crisis?”, “Is the population likely to remain or become food-insecure or malnourished in the future?”, and “Are the affected people able to cope with the problems on their own, without becoming more food-insecure and malnourished?” (“Food Security”). This assessment by the WFP allows for a more streamlined and efficient response. By knowing the exact problems faced, and deploying specific solutions, the WFP has been the most effective UN agency to provide aid to regions with food insecurities.

The type of programs the WFP offers is not limited in any aspect to the type of situation faced in a region. In Ghana, the WFP has provided at-school feeding programs for poorer or undernourished children. These programs help the stability of food in the region, and they also provide incentives for children, especially girls, to attend school. Additionally, in regions where stability is not a significant problem, the WFP helps the conservation, cultivation, and retention of stability. For example, the conservation aspect is seen with a program in Ethiopia called “MERET”. This program provides education to small farmers in Ethiopia to better cultivate their lands and to have a more efficient storage capacity. With better preparedness, the WFP has provided means for a measure of self-sufficiency if a crisis occurs.

The WFP has been in existence since 1961, working with various other governments, NGO’s, and UN agencies to eradicate global hunger. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is a major partner of the WFP in post-crisis relief as well as during crisis-assessment. However, despite the similarities, the FAO and the WFP are different in many aspects. FAO provides technical environmental management, such as land reclamation or seed transportation. Additionally, FAO does not provide disaster relief such as aid packages to cyclone-struck Myanmar, while the WFP has delivered 63,000 tons of food to that region in 2008 (“Annual Report”).

Management of the World Food Programme works much like other UN agencies, with rotations of Executive Director. Additionally, 36 member states also make up the board of the WFP. The Executive Director is directly appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations. However, the WFP remains operationally independent of the UN, without having to function under another branch such as ECOSOC or UNCND.
                                                                     Works Cited

“Our Work” WFP Operations, 2011 http://www.wfp.org/our-work

“Emergency Food Security Assessment Handbook” WFP, 2011-05-17, Page 19 http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/manual_guide_proced/wfp203244.pdf

“The WFP Annual report 2008-2009” The World Food Programme, 2009                              http://www.wfp.org/content/annual-report-2009