A- Brief history and organization of WFP
The WFP was first established in 1961 after the 1960 Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) Conference, when George McGovern, director of
the US Food for Peace Programmes, proposed establishing a multilateral food aid
programme. WFP was formally established in 1963 by the FAO and the United
Nations General Assembly on a three-year experimental basis. In 1965, the
programme was extended to a continuing basis. The WFP is governed by an
Executive Board which consists of representatives from 36 member states. WFP
has a staff of 11,799 people (2011) with 90% operating in the field. WFP
strives to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, with the ultimate goal in mind of
eliminating the need for food aid itself. The core strategies behind WFP
activities, according to its mission statement, are to provide food aid to:
1. save lives in refugee and other emergency situations
2. improve the nutrition and quality of life of the most
vulnerable people at critical times in their lives
3. help build assets and promote the self-reliance of poor
people and communities, particularly through labour-intensive works
programmes
WFP food aid is also directed to fight micronutrient
deficiencies, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat
disease, including HIV
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and AIDS. Food-for-work programmes help promote environmental
and economic stability and agricultural production. In 2008, WFP was
transformed from a food aid organisation to a food assistance organisation.
WFP's five goals in facing up the global hunger challenges are to:
1. save lives in refugee and other emergency situations to
protect livelihoods;
2. Prevent acute hunger and invest in disaster preparedness
and mitigation measures
3. Restore and rebuild lives and livelihoods in
post-conflict, post-disaster or transition situations;
4. Reduce chronic hunger and under-nutrition;
5. Strengthen the capacities of countries to reduce hunger,
including through handover strategies and local purchase.
Since its establishment 50 years ago, WFP has shifted from a
food aid agency to a food assistance agency, with a more nuanced and robust set
of tools to respond to critical hunger needs. Its overarching goal is to reduce
dependency on food aid and to support governmental and global efforts to ensure
long term solutions to the challenge of hunger.
WFP food aid is also directed to fight micronutrient
deficiencies, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat
disease, including HIV and AIDS. Food-for-work programmes help promote
environmental and economic stability and agricultural production. WFP
operations are funded by voluntary donations from world governments,
corporations and private donors. The organization's administrative costs are
only seven per cent--one of the lowest and best among aid agencies. The
Programme also administers the International Emergency Food Reserve (IEFR),
established by the General Assembly with a minimum target of 500,000 tonnes of
cereals.
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B- Some WFP Programmes 1- School Feeding
A daily school meal provides a strong incentive to send
children to school and keep them there and allows the children to focus on
their studies, rather than their stomachs. Providing school meals has many and
varied benefits. The fact that almost all countries in the world - both
affluent and developing - provide school meals is proof of this. In many
countries, where hunger and poverty is greatest, WFP steps in to provide meals
to around 22 million children in 60 countries, often in the hardest-to-reach
areas. WFP has been operating school programmes for more than 50 years and is
the world's largest provider of school meals. Drawing from this experience, WFP
also supports national governments in developing their own quality, sustainable
school feeding programmes.
WFP school meals are usually provided at breakfast or lunch,
or as a snack, such as high-energy biscuits that are provided and eaten every
day in school.
Take-home rations, such as a sack of rice and a can of cooking
oil, can act as an incentive to families whose children attend school
regularly. WFP also uses fortified food and micronutrient powders to ensure
that children get the nourishment they need. School feeding supports the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals on hunger, education and gender
parity and offers multiple benefits:
? Education: school feeding increases
enrolment and attendance and can help children learn more effectively.
? Nutrition: the school meal is often the
only nutritious meal a child gets on a regular basis. It can fight malnutrition
and a lack of essential micronutrients that can curb development. Learn more
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? Health - School meals provides a platform
for directly addressing child health for example through deworming schemes. It
can also be a platform for other health interventions.
? Social protection: School meals acts as
safety for the household, helping families to educate their children and
protect their food security in times of crisis.
? Local agricultural production: Using
locally sourced food means school feeding programmes benefit not only children,
but also farmers, communities and rural economies. Learn about the Purchase for
Progress pilot
School meals programmes protect vulnerable children especially
during shocks such as the food, fuel and financial crises of 2008. Today, as
even affluent countries grapple with painful austerity measures, local
governments and organizations are stepping in to provide school meals to
children whose families can no longer afford to feed them on a regular basis.
Around 368 million children, about 1 out of every 5 children, get a meal at
school every day around the world. This includes pre-primary-, primary- and
secondary-school children from 169 developing and developed countries.
Global investment in these programmes is huge - around US$ 75
billion per annum. Most of the investment comes from government budgets. Return
on investment is substantial - for every $1 spent by governments and donors,
WFP estimates at least $3 is gained in economic returns. School feeding
provides an array of benefits in education and nutrition and to local
agriculture. The number of children receiving school meals is lowest in
countries where the need is the greatest. In low-income countries, the
proportion of primary school children receiving school meals is just 18%, while
in lower-middle-income countries that figure is 49%.
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Donor support is crucial for low-income countries. External
development assistance accounts for 83% of investment in school feeding in
low-income countries. In some low-income countries the cost of feeding a child
in school exceeds the overall cost of education. In low- income countries there
is great potential for cost efficiencies.
Since the year 2000, 21 countries have started their own
school meals programmes that are financed and managed by the government: 17 of
these were or are supported by WFP, which works with governments to achieve
national ownership of their programmes.
Figure 6: school meals beneficiaries all around the
world. Source: WFP
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2- Food for Assets or Food for Work (FFW)
WFP's Food for Assets projects (also known as Food for Work)
pays workers with food to start building a hunger-free future for their
communities. For the hungry, every day is about finding enough food to survive:
poor farmers cannot afford to risk experimenting with new agricultural methods,
when they can barely subsist on a small patch of land. The unemployed don't
have a chance to learn new skills if they spend all day scraping a living on
the black market. Poverty-stricken communities hit by floods or droughts are
too busy looking for food to rebuild infrastructure vital for redevelopment.
Providing food in exchange for work makes it possible for the poor and hungry
to devote time and energy to taking the first steps out of the hunger trap.
This is the goal of WFP's food-for-assets projects. Community members are given
food in exchange for work on vital new infrastructure or for time spent
learning new skills that will increase the food security of households or
communities.
Projects include:
? Irrigation, terracing, soil and water conservation. In
countries where drought regularly causes food shortages, irrigation can boost
crop yields by 100-400%.
? In war-torn countries, WFP offers food assistance as an
incentive for ex-combatants to abandon weapons and learn new skills, which are
vital to smooth their path back into society.
? Poverty often forces farmers to overuse soil and grazing
land. The result is barren land and accelerating desertification. WFP provides
food rations to farmers who practice soil conservation by planting trees.
? To help communities develop, WFP sometimes helps people in
villages to build new schools. They receive food, so they can devote time to
the building work without worry about losing income.
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? WFP helps people set up home gardening businesses by giving
them food assistance as they train. This means later they have a livelihood
with which to support themselves.
3- Purchase for Progress (P4P)
As the world's largest humanitarian agency, WFP is a major
staple food buyer. In 2012, WFP bought US$1.1 billion worth of food - more than
75 per cent of this in developing countries WFP buys locally in developing
countries when its criteria of price, quality and quantity can be met. P4P is a
logical continuation of this local procurement with the intent to achieve a
higher developmental gain with WFP's procurement footprint by buying
increasingly in a smallholder-friendly way.
Through P4P, WFP's demand provides smallholder farmers in 20
pilot countries with a greater incentive to invest in their production, as they
have the possibility to sell to a reliable buyer and receive a fair price for
their crops. It is envisioned that in the wake of WFP purchasing in a more
smallholder-friendly way, other buyers of staple commodities including
Governments and the private sector will also increasingly be able to buy from
smallholders. P4P at the same time invests in capacity building at country
level in areas such as postharvest handling or storage, which will yield
sustainable results in boosting national food security over the long term. The
five year pilot P4P (2009 - 2013) rests on three pillars:
i. Demand: Through P4P, WFP tests innovative
ways to buy staple food and promote marketing opportunities for smallholder
farmers.
ii. Supply: P4P links WFP's demand with the
expertise and resources of partners who support farmers to achieve better
yields, reduce their losses after the harvest and improve the quality of their
staple crops.
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iii. Learning and Sharing: P4P will gather
and share lessons on effective approaches to connect smallholder farmers to
markets in a sustainable way and share them widely with stakeholders.
20 Pilot Countries
? Africa: Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic
of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda,
Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia
? Asia: Afghanistan
? Latin America: El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua
Beneficiaries: 500,000 smallholder farmers
Duration: 5 years (Sept 2008 - Sept 2013)
Total funding: US$168 million for technical
capacity, including sub-grants, for 5 years (food not included)
Key donors: Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, European Commission, Governments of
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the United States of
America and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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