2

Alla mia forza di volontà.

A questa città, Padova, che sarà per sempre parte della mia essenza.

To my willpower.

To this city, Padova, that will be forever part of my essence.

3

“We began 2011 with even greater challenges, but with the

confidence that ending hunger is possible.

We will continue to adapt and transform the way we work

to meet the immediate needs of the hungry today

and to be a leader in crafting with governments and partners

coherent, long term hunger solution for tomorrow”.

Josette Sheeran

Executive Director

United Nation World Food Programme

4

Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... ............... 6

Chapter I United Nations World Food Programme. The birth of WFP ................................................ ........... 8

1.1 Historical background. Antecedents: FAO’s pioneering work ....................................................... ...... 8

1.2 UN World Food Programme’s birth ........................................................................................ ............ 16

1.3 1960s: Initiatives at United Nations ........................................................................................ ............ 20

1.4 Food aid during the Second UN Development Decade of the 1970s .................................................. 22

1.5 Food for Development: institutionalizing project food aid ................................................................. 28

1.6 WFP Emergency and Relief Operations ............................................................................ .................. 31

Chapter II Fighting Hunger Worldwide ................................................................................................... ...... 35

2.1 Current and previous WFP Executive Directors ................................................................................. 35

2.2 UN World Food Programme’s Vision and Mission Statement. United Nation’s system against

hunger....................................................................................................................... ............................ 36

2.3 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ......................................................................................... .. 41

2.4 World Hunger ................................................................................. ..................................................... 43

2.5 WFP Strategic Plan (2008-2011) ........................................................................................ ................. 46

2.6 Strategic Objective Four: Reduce Chronic Hunger and Undernutrition ............................................. 51

Chapter III Food for Development: School Feeding Programme .................................................................. 54

3.1 Today’s School Feeding Policy (2008-2011) ……………………………………………….............. 54

3.2 WFP’s Guiding Standards ..................................................................................................... .............. 57

3.3 Sustainability through capacity development ...................................................................................... 58

Chapter IV Emergency Operations (EMOPs) and Protracted Relief Operations (PRROs): policies and

principles .................................................................................................................. ........................................ 62

4.1 Emergency Operations ………………………………………………………………………………. 62

4.2 Protracted Relief and Recovery Operations ........................................................... ............................. 66

Chapter V Case Study: The Transition Process of School feeding in El Salvador ........................................ 69

5.1 Overview ………………………………………………………………………………….………..... 69

5.2 A successful handover experience ………………………………………………………….……….. 73

5.3 The current status of School Feeding in El Salvador ......................................................................... 74

5.3.1 The National Policy Framework .................................................................................. .............. 75

5.3.2 The Institutional Framework .......................................................................................................75

5.3.3 The Financial Framework ............................................................................. ............................. 76

5.3.4 Programme design and implementation .................................................................................... 77

5.3.5 School- level arrangements and infrastructure ..........................................................................78

5.4 A preliminary study of the transition process of School feeding in El Salvador ................................ 79

5.4.1 The transition process: milestones ............................................................................................. 79

5

5.4.2 Steps of the process in El Salvador ............................................................................................ 80

Chapter VI Case Study: first WFP Emergency Operations. Report on Iran, Thailand, Algeria, Morocco,

Tanganyika ....................................................................................................................................................... 83

6.1 Iran ........................................................................................................................ ............................... 83

6.2 Thailand .................................................................................................................. ............................. 85

6.3 Algeria .......................................................................................... ....................................................... 86

6.4 Morocco .................................................................................................................. ............................. 86

6.5 Tanganyika ............................................................................................................. ............................. 87

Chapter VII Interviews .................................................................................................................. ................. 89

7.1 Interview with Mr. Ramiro Armando de Oliveira Lopes da Silva, WFP Deputy Executive Director for

External Relations .......................................................................................................... ...................... 89

7.2 Interview with Mr. Amir Mahmoud Abdulla, WFP Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating

Officer ..................................................................................................................... ........................... 101

7.3 Interview with Mrs. Ilaria Dettori, Chief School Feeding Programme Design and Support Division

............................................................................................................................ ................................ 113

7.4 Interview with Mr. Carlo Scaramella, El Salvador ex Country Director .......................................... 123

7.5 Interview with Mr. Marco Selva, Private Partnerships Manager. Communication, Public Policy and

Private Partnerships Division ............................................................................................................ 128

Appendices .................................................................................................................................................... 132

Dramatis Personae ....................................................................................................................................... 145

Acknowledgements …….……………………………….....………………………...…………………….. 152

Ringraziamenti ................................................................................................................. ............................ 154

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................. 156

6

Introduction The world has been able to produce enough food to provide every citizen

with an adequate diet to lead a healthy, active and productive life. Yet

the hungry-poor (those earning less than the equivalent of one dollar a

day, or who spend most of their income on food) do not have enough to

eat. The co-existence of hunger with the capacity to end it is one of the

gravest paradoxes of our time. It is not only morally repugnant and

unacceptable but politically, economically, and socially indefensible.

Poverty is the underlying cause of hunger. Other factors, including

political irresponsibility, corruption, civil unrest, ethic and religious

conflict, sudden natural disasters, and prolonged and wide-spread

drought, have compounded further the problem of poverty, and thereby

hunger. Food is vital in the affairs of all nations, particularly in poor,

food-deficit countries with inadequate food production or insufficient

foreign exchange to import the food they need. For the poor, food

insecure people in those countries, the quest for food pervades their daily

lives. Food aid should be oriented towards the objective of eventually

eradicating hunger and poverty. It should also have as its basic objective

its own elimination to help countries and people toward self-reliance and

enable people to feed themselves.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was created in 1961

as the organization in the United Nations system concerned exclusively

with food aid, thereby providing an additional dimension to multilateral

assistance. From the beginning of its operations in1963, WFP’s mandate

has been to use food aid to support economic and social development,

provide food and associated logistics support in times of emergency, and

generally promote world food security.

7

Today, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest

humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. WFP pursues a vision

of the world in which every man, woman and child has access at all

times to the food needed for an active and healthy life. WFP works

towards this vision with its sister UN agencies in Rome – the Food and

Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for

Agricultural Development (IFAD) – as well as other government, UN

and NGO partners. Food security and agricultural development are major

challenges facing the world today.

Paul Tergat, 37, knows from personal experience how difficult it is for

children to concentrate at school on an empty stomach. Born in a family

of 17 children, he grew up in the arid Rift Valley in Northern Kenya.

Although Tergat was one of the lucky ones who had a place at school, as

a small boy he often had to attend classes hungry. His life changed in

1977 at the age of eight, when the United Nations World Food

Programme (WFP) started distributing free school meals in the district

where he lived.

It was from these lunches that Tergat gained the energy to run the three

mile trek from his home to the Riwo Primary School and back again.

Doing so, kick-started his spectacular athletic career.

“Without food, it’s very difficult to walk to school, let alone concentrate

on our studies” he says.

In January 2004, Paul became a WFP Ambassador Against Hunger. He

now uses his fame as an international athlete and world-record holder to

raise awareness of the same school feeding programme that helped set

him on the road to success.

“School children around the world must have the opportunity to pursue

their dreams” he says.

8

Chapter I

United Nation World Food Programme

The birth of WFP

1.1 Historical background.

Antecedents: FAO’s pioneering work

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest

humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.

WFP has its antecedents in the various attempts to set up some form of

multilateral world food security arrangements since the time of the

League of Nations before the Second World War. These attempts tried to

rationalize food production, supply and trade for the benefit of both

producers and consumers, in developing and developed countries. They

focused attention on two basic concerns: first, to reconcile the interests

of producers and consumers by protecting them from uncontrolled

fluctuations in world agricultural production and prices; secondly, to use

agricultural output in excess of commercial market demand (the so-

called agricultural “surpluses”) to assist economic and social

development in developing countries, without creating disincentive to

their domestic agricultural production or disruption to local or

international trade.

The pre-history of WFP is closely tied up with the work of FAO in

Rome, Italy, the United Nations in New York, the United States

agricultural and foreign policy and the interests of the World Bank in

9

Washington, DC. We will see that WFP owes its origins to the initiative

of one man, George McGovern. Similarly, one man was to figure

prominently in the pre-history of WFP, and in the work and studies

leading up to its establishment. That man was Dr. Hans Singer, who, in

1940, was a senior official in the Economic and Social department of the

United Nations secretariat in New York. Singer had a major impact on

the international food aid debate. He also played a strategic role in the

establishment of WFP. The origins of multilateral food aid can be traced

to two meetings that took place in 1943. In May of that year, US

President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened a meeting at Hot Springs,

Virginia, which laid the foundation for the creation of the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO). In November, an

agreement was signed in Washington, DC, which led to the

establishment of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation

Administration (UNRRA), the first significant “experiment” of a

multilateral agency to deal with food aid.

From its inception in 1945, FAO persistently advocated the

establishment of some form of world food security arrangement and the

constructive use of surplus agricultural commodities for development

and emergency relief in developing countries. Equally important was the

avoidance of potentially destructive effects through the dumping of

unwanted surpluses in developing countries, thereby impeding

agricultural development and trade. The first FAO director-general, Sir

John Boyd Orr, took a proactive stance on both issues.

A first step was to form an “International Emergency Food Council”, a

body with powers to cope with the immediate, short-term chaos caused

by war devastation in Europe and Asia. But a more far-reaching proposal

was to establish a “World Food Board”. The proposal was considered at

the first FAO conference at Copenhagen in September, 1946 but was not

10

approved. In 1949, the proposal was revived in the modified form of an

“International Commodity Clearing House” (ICCH), as an action arm of

FAO. The ICCH proposal was turned down just as decisively as the

previous proposal. The major industrialized countries were adamantly

opposed to any centralized and multilateral world food management

arrangement. While these attempts by the ICCH were unsuccessful, the

FAO secretariat continued to keep the issues alive through a series of

seminal studies and reports throughout the 1950s. Three publications

were to have particular relevance when WFP was eventually established

in 1961. The first concerned the identification of principles and

guidelines for the disposal of agricultural surpluses, first adopted in 1954

in the face of growing food surplus in the United States, which became

known as FAO Principles of Surplus Disposal. These principles, which

were not legally binding but provided “consultative obligation”, were to

form the cornerstone for all WFP’s activities. Three general principles

were recommended. The solution to problems of agricultural surpluses

should be sought, wherever possible, through efforts to increase

consumption, rather than through measures to restrict supplies. Disposal

of excess stocks of agricultural products should be done in an orderly

manner to avoid sharp falls in process on world markets. And, there

should be an undertaking from both importing and exporting countries

that disposal of surpluses would be made without harmful interference to

normal patterns of agricultural production and international trade.

The second FAO study concerned the use of agricultural surpluses to

finance economic development in developing countries, based on the

result of a pilot investigation in India (FAO, 1955). This study laid the

foundation for a project approach in the use of food aid, subsequently

adopted by WFP. The results of the study show in detail how large

amounts of capital represented by food surpluses could be used to

11

finance a general expansion of investment programmes in developing

countries. The third FAO study detailed a proposal for the establishment

of an International Emergency Food Reserve.

A number of resolutions were adopted by the FAO Council and

Conference on these and related subjects. These were passed onto the

UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the UN General

Assembly for action, which led to nothing. The main reason for the lack

of progress was the reluctance of governments, mainly in developed

countries, to approve measures that might weaken their national

initiatives and powers of control. The climate of opinion was against

multilateral action in operational fields, distinct from advisory or

informational roles. However, persistence eventually paid off.

The 1960s began with an entirely new approach in the quest for world

food security on the initiative of a new FAO director-general, from the

Asia region, Binay Ranjan Sen, popularly known as B.R. Sen.

The idea of mounting a world campaign against hunger was on Sen’s

mind when he became FAO’s director-general in 1956. At the summer

session of ECOSOC in 1957, he sketched out the main objectives of a

“Freedom for Hunger Campaign” (FFHC), which were: to attract

worldwide attention to the problem; to secure the participation and co-

operation of all concerned; to achieve a degree of enthusiasm and

anticipation, which would result in more effective national and

international action; and, in the process, establish a higher level of

mutually profitable world trade to help raise the prosperity of both

developed and developing countries.

The FFHC was officially launched on 1 July 1960. Sen explained that he

made FFHC the central theme of all FAO activities during his time as

director-general (1956-67). When he initiated the campaign, he felt that

12

he could best express himself to mounting international concern by

quoting from one of his favourite poets, John Donne:

“One man’s hunger is every man’s hunger – one man’s freedom from

hunger is neither a free nor a secure freedom until all men are free from

hunger”

These words were taken as key to the entire campaign.1

In the context of FAO’s Freedom for Hunger Campaign, a resolution was

adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 1960 on the

“Provision of Food Surpluses to Food-Deficient People through the

United Nation System” (Resolution 1946 -XVI)2, which invited FAO, in

consultation with others, to establish “without delay” procedures by

which, with the assistance of the United Nation system, “the largest

practicable quantities of surplus food may be made available on

mutually agreeable terms as a transitional measure against hunger”.

FAO was invited to submit a study of the subject for approval.

The FAO director general, B.R.Sen, appointed a small group of “high-

level, independent experts” to assist him in preparing the study. Hans

Singer was appointed as its chairman.

The whole emphasis of this report was to deal with the surplus problem

not by curtailing production, but by expanding demand. In the spirit of

optimism, the group considered that the resources to implement a far-

reaching programme were already available. In its opinion, a transfer of

two-thirds to three-quarters of one per cent of the Gross National

Products (GNP) of the developed countries over a period of five years,

and probably less for another decade, would provide sufficient means for

helping people in the developing countries to help themselves. This

would represent a much smaller international redistribution of income

1 D. JOHN SHAW, “World Food Security. A history since 1945”, Palgrave, 2007, pp. 77ss. 2 See Appendices - Attachment I “UN General Assembly Resolution 1496 (XVI) Provision of Food Surpluses to Food-Deficient People through the United Nation System”, 27 October 1960.

13

than the national redistribution of income achieved by progressive

taxation within most of the developed countries, when they were less

rich than they were in 1961. Food aid from the food surplus that existed

was seen to be an important part of the resources needed for economic

development in the developing countries.

A central part of the expert group’s case was that surplus food products

could form an important part of capital in its original sense of a

“Subsistence Fund”. The group estimated that about $12,500 million of

agricultural commodities would become available as “surpluses” over a

five-year period for use outside normal commercial market channels,

either bilaterally or through the United Nation system. It recommended

that about two-thirds of these resources should be used in economic

development programmes and one third for social development.

Between $1,550 million and $1,650 million of surplus food a year might

be used for Economic Development Programmes over a five-year period.

The aim would be to provide developing countries with a positive

incentive for maximum national efforts to increase their rate of growth.

A small part of the total surplus food should be allocated for the

establishment of National Food Reserves in developing countries to the

extent that they could equip themselves with the appropriate storage

facilities and institutional and logistical arrangements to manage and

handle the reserves. In addition, an International Emergency Food

Reserve should be established to provide relief food grants to the victims

of famine and other physical disasters. The group estimated that about

$150 million a year would be required for this purpose. It was to take

another 14 years before an International Emergency Food Reserve was

established in 1975.

Resources should also be made available to promote Social

Development. Four types of social development programmes were

14

identified: Land Reform Programmes, School Feeding Programmes,

Training Programmes, Relief and Welfare Programmes.

School Feeding programmes should be supported at a cost of about $500

million a year as a part of the process of human capital formation, which

had come to be recognized as a basic necessity for economic

development, and as productive as physical capital formation. The better

feeding of school children was seen as a move in the direction of greater

equality of opportunity, which was regarded as a basic step in fostering

self-help and economic development. Around $7,000 million per year

was required to feed all children between the ages of 5 and 14 in

developing countries with a single meal a day of 60 grams of wheat and

25 grams of dried skimmed milk. The availability of meals would

encourage school attendance and improve food habits.

While the major part of international aid would continue to be provided

bilaterally, the expert group recommended that it should be supplied

within a Multilateral Framework. A consultative, multilateral framework

would assure that bilateral and international aid activities would be

provided within coherent and consistent country programmes of

assistance. For incorporating the use of surplus food into development

programmes, and advising on the general economic requirements of the

developing countries, FAO should work closely with the United Nations,

and particularly with its Regional Economic Commission in Africa, Asia

and Latin America. To ensure that surplus food was combined with

additional financial and technical aid in packages of assistance, FAO and

the United Nations should work closely with such financial institutions

as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)

and the newly established soft-lending facility of the World Bank, The

International Development Association (IDA). Much of the technical and

training work involved, as well as pilot projects and surveys, could lead

15

to action by the United Nations Special Fund and the Expanded

Programme of Technical Assistance of the United Nations (EPTA), later

to be merged to become the United Nations Development Program

(UNPD).

The vital function of Country Programming for external assistance,

including food aid, was highlighted, anticipating by more than three

decades the country programme approach that was adopted by WFP. A

country programme, not a project approach would determine the criteria

for the productive use of aid capital, including food aid, and would be a

guard against fungibility3.

The views of the expert group were taken fully into account in the report

of the FAO director general to ECOSOC. Although a number of their

recommendations were well in advance of their time, their value was

subsequently recognized4.

The expert’s report was well received by officials in key positions in the

United States. In a memorandum to President Kennedy, the US

ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai E. Stevenson, described it as

“One of the most remarkable documents on the subject”5.

Joint proposals were made by the UN and FAO regarding procedures

and arrangements for the multilateral utilization of surplus food,

including the establishment of “Surplus Utilization Fund” to be

administered by a joint “UN/FAO Surplus Utilization Division”, later to

be called the World Food Programme and the WFP secretariat

respectively. The political climate was that within less than a year after

3 SHAW D. JOHN, The UN World Food Programme and the development of food aid, New York, Palgrave, 2001, pp. 19 – 27. 4 Writing over 20 years later, Singer recognized that the expert group’s report did not deal with a number of important areas, including: man-made emergencies; nutrition; improvement for mothers and preschools children; and the use of triangular transaction for providing food aid. (SINGER, 1983, p.37) 5 Memorandum to President Kennedy from Adlai Stevenson, US ambassador to the United Nations, 31 November 1961, in Adlay E. Ambassador to the United Nations, 1961-1965, Vol. VIII, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979, pg. 149.

16

the expert group had submitted its report to the FAO director-general in

February 1961, WFP was established as an experimental programme.

1.2 UN World Food Programme’s Birth.

We have seen that Dr. Hans Singer figured in the prehistory of WFP, and

in the work and studies leading up to its establishment. Similarly, we

shall see that WFP owes its origins to the initiative of George Mc

Govern.

The birth of WFP in 1961, in fact, was due to the inspiration of George

McGovern, who at the time, was the first director of the newly created

Office of Food for Peace in the Executive Office of United States

President John F. Kennedy and special assistant to him.

As we have seen, The United Nations General Assembly passed a

resolution on the “Provision of food surpluses to food-deficient peoples

through the United Nations system”. The director-general of FAO was

invited to undertake a study of how this might be done.

Before submitting the study for approval, this was discussed by a FAO

Intergovernmental Advisory Committee in Rome between 5 and 12 April

1961.

President Kennedy requested George McGovern to represent the United

States at the meeting. McGovern suggested to the other members of the

US delegation that a concrete proposal should be made to the

Intergovernmental Advisory Committee in order to move the process

forward. He persisted.

Although Mc Govern had not discussed the proposal with President

Kennedy before he left Rome, he felt that it reflected the president’s

17

views regarding a broader and more constructive use of food aid and his

strong support for the United Nations.

The multilateral food aid programme that McGovern proposed was

circumscribed in a number of ways. It was to be limited to $100 million

in commodities and cash when, in 1961, the value of farm products

shipped under the United States food aid programme alone was $1.3

billion and US surpluses in stock had reached 112 million tons. It was

restricted to three years, and to be conducted on an experimental basis,

with a decision on its continuation dependent on an evaluation of

experience. The activities of the experimental programme were to be

restricted to meeting emergencies and to pilot development projects,

such as school lunch and labour-intensive projects. They were not to

include large-scale, bulk, programme food aid that the United States and

other donor governments were providing bilaterally. The proposal

reflected perfectly the three dominant forces that fashioned Mc Govern’s

overriding philosophy throughout his public life: support the American

farmers; the constructive use of food surpluses; and resolving

international problems through the medium of the United Nations.

It was to be a truly multilateral program with the widest possible

contribution by member countries.

FAO, and its general-director in particular, were given a major role in the

proposed new multilateral programme. This was in recognition of FAO’s

mandate and early work on food surplus concerns and issues, and

confidence in the ability of FAO director-general, B.R. Sen, to run the

proposed programme effectively.

For his part, Sen recognized the strategic role that McGovern played in

progressing on his study concerning multilateral food aid and facility.

McGovern’s proposal caught the delegates from other countries by

surprise when, the proposal was accepted by the Intergovernmental

18

Advisory Committee on 10 April 1961. Kennedy gave the proposal his

personal endorsement at a press conference on 21 April 1961.

Looking back at his initiative, McGovern still regarded the proposal with

satisfaction. It represented the best possible pragmatic political action at

the time.

The United States reiterated the proposal at the FAO Council meeting in

Rome in June 1961. The proposal was incorporated into parallel

resolutions that were passed by the FAO Conference and the United

Nations General Assembly on 24 November and 19 December 1961

respectively that resulted in the establishment of WFP, if only on a three-

year experimental basis. WFP was born.

In December 1961, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and

the UN General Assembly adopted parallel resolutions establishing

WFP.

The UN General Assembly Resolution 17146 approved “the

establishment of an experimental World Food Programme to be

undertaken jointly by the United Nations and the Food and Agricultural

Organization of the United Nations, in co-operation with other interested

United Nations agencies and appropriate inter-governmental bodies,

bearing in mind that the establishment of such a programme in no way

would have prejudiced the bilateral agreement between developed and

developing countries and accepted and endorsed the purposes,

principles and procedures formulated in the first part of the resolution

approved by the Conference of Food and Agricultural Organization on

24 November 19617.”

6 See Appendices - Attachment II “UN General Assembly Resolution 1714 (XVI) World Food Programme”, 19 December 1961. 7 ivi.

19

The three-year experimental programme was not due to enter into

operation until January 1963. The experimental years (1963-1965) were

to have a profound effect on WFP activities for most of the next decades.

Three “bodies of evidence” had an influence on whether the programme

should continue after the experimental period. First, were the activities

conducted by WFP during the experimental period. Second, were the

findings of a study programme that was requested in the United Nations

General Assembly resolution approving the experimental programme.

And third, was the support given to WFP both within and outside the

United Nations system, and by the activities of the bilateral food aid

programmes, particularly that of the United States.

The focus during the experimental period was to gain sufficient

experience, in a short period of time, to qualify WFP for continuation.

At the end of WFP’s experimental period on 31 December 1965, 101

countries had participated in the experiment as donors or recipients, or

both. Total resources contributed to WFP reached $93.7 million. During

the first three years of the experimental period, 32 emergency operations

were carried out in 25 countries, and 116 development projects were

supported in a wide variety of economic and social development sectors.

It was estimated that 200,000 workers were employed in WFP-assisted

development projects in 1965 alone, the last year of the experimental

period. As WFP provided rations to a worker and his family, about one

million people benefited directly from the Programme’s assistance, and

more indirectly from the work programmes carried out, giving an

indication of the potential scope of the future activities of the

Programme.8

8 SHAW D. JOHN, The UN World Food Programme and the development of food aid, New York, Palgrave, 2001, pg. 62.

20

The pioneering zeal and spirit of optimism was carried forward into the

continuing phase of WFP’s activities. At the pledging conference for

WFP resources for another three years, 1966-8, the United States

representative said:

“With the future in mind, we urge that the work toward a further expansion

of the World Food Programme. The task we face is enormous – but not

impossible. We have made a good start. The spirit of the World Food

Programme is a positive force for the benefit of mankind.9.”

1.3 1960s: Initiatives at the United Nations

A number of initiatives taken at the United Nations in New York were to

directly and indirectly have an influence on the establishment of WFP.

The two most significant were: a proposal to set up a UN Special Fund

for Economic Development (SUNFED); and President Kennedy’s

proposal to make the 1960s a “United Nations Development Decade”.

UN Special Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED)

Negotiations went on throughout the 1950s to establish a soft-lending

multilateral financing facility at the UN to assist developing countries

undertake their development programmes. SUNFED was not approved,

mainly due to the opposition in the United States. However, the proposal

was later adopted by the International Bank for Reconstruction and

Development (IBRD) in the form of its financing window, the

International Development Association (IDA), despite the initial

opposition from bank staff, particularly its president, Eugene Black, who

9 Statement by United State’s secretary of agriculture, Orville L. Freeman, at the pledging conference at the United Nations, New York, 18 January 1966. Public Statements of Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman. Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

21

feared that the provision of soft loans would undermine its main lending

operations and its financial viability10.

United Nations Development Decade

WFP was born in the halcyon days of the United Nations. The first

United Nations Development Decade of the 1960s, proposed by United

States President John F. Kennedy, had just been launched. A newly

accepted principle of international solidarity and burden-sharing in

development co-operation had expressed itself in a greater willingness to

give assistance to developing countries. In this inspiring, international

environment, the United States made the original, politically bipartisan

proposal for the establishment of a multilateral facility for food aid

within the United Nations system.

In his address to the UN General Assembly on 25 September 1961,

President Kennedy said:

“Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting

poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the

future holds no hope. That is why my Nation, which has freely shared its

capital and technology to help others help themselves, now proposes

officially designating the decade of the 1960s as the United Nations Decade

of Development. Under the framework of that Resolution11, the United

10 In the 1960s, when acting as an adviser to the then UN secretary–general, Dag Hammarskjold, Singer drafted a proposal that the IBRD should be responsible for targeting food aid towards the reconstruction and the development projects it was supporting. This would have resulted in a fusing of financial and food aid in works programmes that Singer also advocated later in jointly-funded projects between the Bank and WFP. Hammarkjold contacted the then president of the IBRD, Eugene Black, proposing that the Bank establish a separate management division to undertake multilateral food aid. The proposal was declined. The schism between multilateral soft financing and food aid, with the former going to the World Bank and the latter to WFP, was to have lasting negative repercussions. It was to result in a lower level of co-ordination of financial and food aid than might have otherwise occurred, to the mutual detriment of both types of assistance. It was also to result in different methods of appraisal, operational procedures and evaluation, even mind-sets, and odious comparisons, in which food aid came to be regarded as a “second class” resource. This also reflected the state of affairs in bilateral aid programmes where food aid was handled differently from other forms of assistance, by separate administrative units, and special legislative, financial and operating procedures, inhibiting the fusion of the different forms of aid. On the other hand, the birth of WFP might be seen, as a part of a wider compromise in which food aid and pre-investment financing were given to the United Nations as “consolation prizes” for the loss of financing facility to the World Bank. SHAW D. .JOHN, The UN World Food Programme and the development of food aid, New York, Palgrave, 2001, pg. 27ss. 11 See Appendices - Attachment III “ UN General Assembly Resolution 1715 (XVI) United Nations Development Decade. A programme for international economic co-operation (II)”.

22

Nations’ existing efforts in promoting economic growth can be expanded

and coordinated. New research, technical assistance and pilot projects can

unlock the wealth of less developed lands and untapped waters. And

development can become a cooperative and not a competitive enterprise –

to enable all nations, however diverse in their systems and beliefs, to

become in fact as well as in law free and equal nations12.

The UN General Assembly approved Kennedy’s proposal, which created

the “atmosphere” for positive action that helped in the approval of the

new World Food Programme. In the “Proposal for Action” to be

implemented during the development decade that were published by the

United Nations in 1962, after the decision to establish WFP on an

experimental basis had been made, reference was made to the roles that

WFP could play in meeting emergencies and in supporting development

projects. A number of new approaches were also identified, which were

relevant for the planning of WFP activities. These included: the concept

of national planning for social as well as economic development; the

importance of the human factor in the development and in the urgent

need to mobilize human resources; and the need to tackle the problem of

under-employment and unemployment that existed throughout the

developing world. The underlying theme was co-ordinated and cohesive

action in which the various UN bodies combined their resources in

national programmes of assistance at country level.

12 SHAW D. JOHN, The UN World Food Programme and the development of food aid, Palgrave, New York, 2001, pg.28.

23

1.4 Food aid during the Second UN Development Decade

of the 1970s

During preparations for the implementation of the First UN

Development Decade of the 1960s, WFP was seen as representing an

experimental extension of the idea of multilateral aid in terms of physical

commodities. Developed countries were urged to think more about the

possibility of bringing their surplus resources and capacities to bear on

the promotion of development in developing countries. While WFP was

still a fledgling organization, calls for its significant modification and

enlargement were made. UN General Assembly Resolution 209613 was

passed in December 1965 which called on the UN secretary-general, in

cooperation with FAO director-general, to undertake a comprehensive

study of multilateral food aid. The resolution was passed immediately

after the one adopted by the United Nations General Assembly which

approved the continuation of WFP (UN General Assembly Resolution

209514) “for as long as multilateral food aid is found feasible and

desirable”. The resolution noted that “the problem of hunger will

continue to be one of the most serious problems facing the international

community in the years to come” and that “ the experience gained by the

World Food Programme and the increase in its resources should enable

it to enlarge its potential in this field”. The various proposals intended to

make WFP a larger and more effective instrument of international co-

operation gave rise to fundamental issues that went beyond the terms of

reference of WFP’s governing body. These considerations resurfaced

during preparations for the second UN Development Decade of the 13 See Appendices - Attachment IV, UN General Assembly Resolution 2096 (XX) Programme of Studies of Multilateral Food Aid, 20 December 1965. 14 See Appendices - Attachment V, UN General Assembly Resolution 2095 (XX) Continuation of the World Food Programme, 20 December 1965.

24

1970s as a promising avenue for significant increase in overall aid

resources. An additional motive was to provide another opportunity to

consider the various proposals for transforming WFP so that it might

become a major force in world food aid. Six months after the UN

secretary-general’s multilateral food aid study was completed, the UN

General Assembly passed another Resolution on “Multilateral Food

Aid”15 (Resolution 2462). On this occasion, the resolution was

specifically directed to WFP’s governing body, the Intergovernmental

Committee (IGC). The resolution called on the IGC to give its views on

four specific issues: the UN secretary-general’s studies on multilateral

food aid; recommendations on food aid and related issues to assist in

preparations for the second UN Development Decade; ways and means

of improving WFP, including resource allocations to WFP from the Food

Aid Convention (FAC) of 1967; and finally, examination of the possible

inclusion of in-kind aid other than food in WFP’s resources.

The IGC report stressed that the world’s food problem was an

inseparable part of the broader problems of development. It was

reasoned that, amongst other things, economic progress would raise food

supplies through increased local production or commercial imports and

increase effective demand, thereby improving nutrition. But despite

considerable progress projected by the end of the second Development

Decade, many people in developing countries were expected to be

unable to obtain sufficient food. At the same time, FAO and OECD

(Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) projections

indicated that during the 1970s developed countries would produce more

cereals and dairy products than could be absorbed in commercial

15 See attachment VI “UN General Assembly Resolution 2462 (XXIII) Multilateral Food Aid”, 20 December 1968.

25

markets. Food aid could help in transferring surpluses to needy people,

subject to appropriate safeguards.

No recommendations were given concerning the total volume of food aid

that might be provided during the 1970s because of difficulties in

forecasting likely availabilities and assessing the capacity of receiving

countries to use food aid effectively. However, one specific proposal was

made. It was recommended that the supplementary food should be

provided to 60 million of the most vulnerable people in developing

countries with about $600 million of food aid, which represented about

half the total flow of food aid in 1970. While recognizing that food aid

might continue to be provided mainly on a bilateral basis, the report

recommended that the UN General Assembly should draw the attention

of member states to the advantages of channelling a greater proportion of

food aid through multilateral channels, particularly WFP.

Concerning WFP itself, the report considered that while it should

continue to pursue the project approach in the provision of food aid, to

which it had been restricted by its institution, WFP should also

experiment with other approaches to help development. While WFP’s

experience had shown that the project approach was effective, the

number of sound projects that recipient countries could formulate and

implement, and in addition, handling their administrative and budgetary

capacities, was limited. WFP and other aid programmes should help

developing countries reduce those constraints. However, there were a

number of developmental needs that could be considered jointly in the

context of a country’s developmental plan. This would facilitate WFP’s

support for integrated regional area development programmes. WFP

commitments could be switched from activities within a multi-project

that were performing unsatisfactorily to those progressing well. The

26

report recognized that food aid could also support the national

development plans of developing countries.

WFP’s collaboration with the UN and its specialized agencies “should be

deepened and become more sustained”. Close attention should be given

to the association of WFP’s assistance with the technical services

provided by the UN and its specialized agencies; the formulation of

projects within their own mandates that could benefit from WFP’s

assistance; provision of technical advice and support during

implementation of WFP-supported projects; and specifically, closer

collaboration with UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). The

report also called for closer collaboration between WFP and international

organizations outside the UN system and with bilateral food aid

programmes. WFP aid had not been provided in association with food

aid from other sources during its three-year experimental period because

of the need to evaluate its performance before a decision was taken to

continue its operations. This was no longer necessary. WFP could take

part in consultative groups and aid consortia, and in jointly financed

projects, in which its aid could be combined with bilateral assistance.

Collaboration with non-governmental organizations could also be

substantially increased. The proposal, that WFP should provide non-food

items in-kind, in addition to food commodities, proved to be a

controversial issue. The non-food items that might be channelled trough

WFP were identified as fertilizers, pesticides, specific types of farm

machinery, and storage equipment and materials. It was recognized that

the impact of WFP-assisted projects could be considerably enhanced if

food aid was accompanied by these non-food inputs. However, certain

negative factors were noted. In view of the lack of interest shown by

potential donors in making non food items available as aid through WFP,

the danger of such aid displacing pledges of food, and the desirability of

27

WFP concentrating its efforts on food aid, it was decided that it was

inadvisable to embark on changes in WFP’s operations. WFP did set up

a small non-food items unit in 1974 to obtain such items directly related

to WFP-assisted development projects and emergency operations. These

items included trucks to transport food from ports and border stations to

project sites and distribution centres, storage and packaging materials,

insecticides and fumigation liquids, and kitchen and canteen equipment.

Tools, equipment and materials needed to implement WFP-assisted

development projects were also supplied.

Further consideration of these multilateral food aid studies was

interrupted by a world crisis at the beginning of 1970s, leading to a new

agenda for action.

In the meantime, food aid remained a controversial subject. Some, like

Hans Singer, had seen the opportunities that it could provide as well as

the challenges it presented as an effective aid resource not only in times

of emergency but also for addressing food insecurity and assisting the

developmental aspirations of the hungry poor. Others have criticized

food aid for creating disincentives for small farmers in recipient

countries by depressing food prices, distorting markets, discouraging

agricultural policy reform and fostering dependency, and the high

transfer cost associated with the type of food aid to donor countries and

types of commodities16.

Against this background, WFP has emerged as “not only the world’s

largest humanitarian agency, but one of its most respected and

effective”17.

16 CLAY E., The Development Effectiveness of Food Aid, OEDC Publishing, Paris, 2005. CLAY E., STOKE O. Food Aid Reconsidered: Assessing the Impact on Third World Countries, Frank Cass, London, 1991. 17 EVANS G., Bread and Stones. Leadership and Struggle to Reform the United Nations World Food Programme, SC: BookSurge, North Charleston, 2006.

28

Furthermore, “there was a general agreement that, in many situations,

food aid was often a necessary, if not insufficient resource for achieving

sustainable food security, and that like all aid, it mostly depended on the

ways in which its provided and used together with other types of aid

resource”18.

1.5 Food for Development:

institutionalizing project food aid

Although WFP had an important role in emergencies, its main focus of

attention for most of its first 40 years of its operations was on using food

aid in support of economic and social development projects. Distinct

phases may be discerned during this period: the first decade to the World

Food Conference in 1974 during which WFP was faced with unstable

and fluctuating resources and searched for a distinct identity; and much

of the next 30 years during which project food aid was fully developed

and institutionalized.

Events leading up to the world food crisis of the early 1970s

demonstrated how unpredictable and fragile the world food security

situation was, and how quickly it could change.

In September 1973, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, proposed

that a world conference should be convened under the United Nations

auspices to address the crisis. The UN General Assembly agreed and an

intergovernmental “United Nations World Food Conference” was held

at a ministerial level in Rome, Italy, in November 1974. During this

event, the conference did not reach an agreement on the overarching

strategy and institutional arrangements proposed for achieving world

18 D. JOHN SHAW, “World Food Security. A history since 1945”, Palgrave, New York, 2007, pp. 106ss.

29

food security. However, it did adopt 23 resolutions relating to various

aspects of the world food problem.

A number of the food recommendations achieved from the conference

were not implemented. Nevertheless, the conference was to provide a

major watershed in WFP’s development. The immediate effect was a

substantial increase in WFP’s resources as several donors increased their

contributions, making it at one time the largest source of grant aid in the

United Nations system. Consequently, its responsibilities were increased

considerably.

By the end of the first decade of WFP operations in 1972, US$1.2 billion

of assistance had been committed to 540 development projects in 94

developing countries, and annual food aid disbursements had reached

US$170 million. An estimated 24 million people had benefited directly

from WFP assistance.

The next ten years were to witness a steady growth, refinement and

institutionalization of WFP project food aid for development, so that by

1982 WFP had committed about US$5.3 billion of assistance to over

1,000 development projects in 114 developing countries, directly

benefiting 94 million people. WFP became one of the major funding

programmes of the United Nations system and a principle source of grant

aid to the poorest sections of the populations of developing countries.

By the end of the first 30 years of operation in 1992, WFP had invested

over US$13 billion in 1,600 development projects to combat hunger and

promote economic and social development throughout the developing

world. In 1992 alone, WFP commitments to on-going development

projects totalled US$3 billion and provided assistance to 52 million

people. WFP was the largest source of grant development assistance to

the poor in developing countries, as well as the principal channel for

emergency aid in the United Nations system. In the process, three

30

notable characteristics stood out: WFP was the largest source of

assistance within the United Nations system to development projects

involving and benefiting poor women in developing countries; WFP was

the largest provider of grant assistance for environmental protection and

improvement activities in developing countries; WFP was the largest

purchaser of food and services in developing countries among United

Nations agencies, and a major supporter of South-South trade.

During the first 30 years of WFP operations, changes were manifested in

several ways. There was a gradual shift in focus to Sub-Saharan Africa,

which became the main recipient of WFP development assistance,

followed by South and East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and

Europe, Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

A broad category of agricultural and rural development projects received

about two-thirds of WFP development aid commitments, while projects

for human resource development received one-third.

There was a deliberate attempt to allocate development commitments to

the neediest people in the poorest countries. Priority was therefore given

to countries classified as least-developed, and to low income, food-

deficit countries, to which an increasing proportion of WFP development

aid was allotted.

A market difference developed among the recipient regions in the way in

which WFP food aid was used. Whilst the largest share of WFP

assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, the Middle East and the

Commonwealth of Independent States went to emergency operations, the

largest share in the Asia and Pacific region went directly to productive

projects, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, to human resource

development19.

19 SHAW D. JOHN, The UN World Food Programme and the development of food aid, Palagrave, New York, 2001, pp. 82ss.

31

1.6 WFP Emergency and Relief Operations

There was one issue that caused much debate from the inception of WFP

operations. While the Programme could help in times of emergency as

well as assist economic and social developmental projects, what should

be the “balance”? The study by the expert group that led to the creation

of WFP focused on developmental uses of food aid, as did the pioneering

FAO food aid study in India before it. However, McGovern’s proposal

for a multilateral three-year experimental food aid programme stated that

“the primary aim of the program in its initial stages should be to meet

emergency needs”. The resolutions formally creating WFP in

November/December 1961 called on WFP to pay attention to

“establishing adequate and orderly procedures on a world basis for

meeting emergency food needs and emergencies inherent in chronic

malnutrition”. This was listed as the first objective of WFP assistance in

the general regulations of the newly created organization in 1963. And

WFP’s governing body was to give more attention to emergency

operations than to any other single subject.

Despite the initial prominence given to responding to emergency

situations, only a modest proportion of WFP resources were allocated for

providing that purpose. During the first year of WFP operations, up to 25

percent of the commodities pledged to the programme were earmarked

for use in emergencies, including the establishment of national food

reserves. At the beginning of each year, US$7 million of WFP’s

resources were reserved for emergency food needs. Should that amount

prove inadequate, a further US$3 million in any one year could be drawn

from WFP’s resources for emergencies. This rigid formula was further

amended in 1978 when it was decided that for meeting emergency food

32

needs, the amounts to be reserved from WFP’s resources would be

determined by WFP’s governing body “In accordance with changing

circumstances”20. In case of a special need, WFP’s Executive Director

could request additional amounts of emergency food aid to be drawn

from the Programme’s regular resources. Any unused balance of

emergency food aid allocations were returned to WFP’s general

resources at the end of each year. WFP was also permitted in

emergencies to arrange for the purchase and transportation of food and

related non-food items, and for the monitoring of their distribution, on

behalf of bilateral food aid programmes and other UN agencies, so long

as reimbursement was received for the service provided.

Providing emergency relief is a complex issue, both conceptually and

practically. Initially, emergency situations qualifying for WFP assistance

were defined as arising out of “critical food shortages or famine

resulting from sudden or unexpected occurrences”.21 However, this

definition was considered to be too general and was amended in 1970 to:

“urgent situations in which there is a clear evidence that an event has

occurred which caused human suffering or loss of livestock and which

the government concerned has not the means to remedy; and it is a

demonstrably abnormal event which produces dislocation in the life of a

community on an exceptional scale.22

Three types of emergencies were identified: sudden, natural calamities,

such as earthquake, floods, and hurricanes; slower-maturing emergencies

arising from food shortages caused by drought, crop failures, pests and

20 Report on the Fifth Session of United Nations/FAO Committee on Food Aid Policies and Programmes, WFP/CFA: 7/21. 21 Synopsis of World Food Programmes Policies. FP1/1 22 WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME, Food Aid and related Issues during the Second Development Decade, Report of the Intergovernmental Committee of the World Food Programme in response to resolution 2462(XXIII) of United Nations General Assembly, WFP/IGC: 17/5 Rev.1.

33

diseases: and man-made emergencies resulting in refugees and displaced

persons.

Every disaster has its own characteristics. Strict adherence to a definite

set of criteria for WFP emergency assistance was therefore, neither

possible nor desirable.

Speed of action is crucial in emergency operations. Governments in

disaster-afflicted countries, governments in donor countries, aid agencies

and programmes, and NGOs (national and international) all have a part

to play in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency

assistance. Deficiencies on the part of any one of these can adversely

affect the work of the others, and hence the entire emergency operation.

Emergency operations have grown from a small, but important,

component of WFP activities to become a major part of its work.

WFP commitments of emergency assistance (at current prices) increased

from an annual average of US$21 million up to 1975 to almost $900

million in 1992. If resources committed for protracted refugee and

displaced person operations, which began in 1989, are included, total

emergency relief assistance committed by WFP in 1992 reached $1.4

billion. While WFP developmental assistance tripled in the 1970s, its

emergency aid increased ten-fold. This imbalance continued over the

next two decades.

Major changes have taken place with the proportions of WFP assistance

going to the three types of emergencies mentioned over the past 40 years

of operations.

At the end of the first decade of WFP operations, almost half of WFP’s

emergency assistance went to the victims of drought and crop failures,

about one third to those afflicted by sudden natural disasters, and less

than a fifth to refugees and displaced persons, and the victims of man-

made disasters.

34

At the end of the second decade of WFP operations, over half of WFP

emergency commitments went to man-made disasters, 41 per cent to

emergencies caused by drought, and only 6 per cent to sudden natural

disasters.

By the end of the third decade of WFP operations, the bulk of WFP

emergency assistance was directed to saving the lives of refugees and

displaced persons caught up in wars, civil strife and ethnic and religious

conflict.

WFP commitments for protracted refugees and displaced person projects

(PRROs) were made in 1989, when a special resource facility for

assisting PRROs, lasting more than one year, was established. This

facility has considerably added to WFP’s overall emergency relief

assistance. It reached over US$557 million in 1991 as man-made

disasters not only increased in number and scale, but also in duration. It

has subsequently declined as some of the war situations have been

resolved and victims have returned to their homes, increasing the

demand for food aid for reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes.

Over a period of seven years (1989-95), more than four million tons

were shipped by WFP to PRROs in 31 countries. Over half to PRROs in

Sub-Saharan Africa, 28 percent to those in South and East Asia, 12

percent to those in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe and Central

Asia, and less than one percent to those in Latin America.

35

Chapter II

Fighting Hunger Worldwide

2.1 Current and previous WFP Executive Directors.

Since it was founded in 1963, WFP has fed more than 1.4 billion of the

world’s poorest people, and invested more than US$30 billion in

development and emergency relief. WFP is governed by an Executive

Board which consists of representatives from 36 member states. Josette

Sheeran is the current Executive Director, appointed jointly by the UN

Secretary General and the Director – General of the FAO for a five year

term. She heads the Secretariat of WFP. WFP's Executive Director is

responsible for the administration of WFP as well as the implementation

of its programmes, projects and other activities. Josette Sheeran became

the eleventh Executive Director of the United Nations World Food

Programme in April 2007. Before joining WFP, Ms. Sheeran served as

the Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs at

the United States Department of State. There she was responsible for

economic issues including development, trade, agriculture, finance,

energy, telecommunications and transportation, with much of her focus

on economic diplomacy to help developing nations advance towards

economic self-sufficiency and prosperity.

WFP has had 11 Executive Directors since its launch in 1961. The 10

that preceded Josette Sheeran were: April 2002-April 2007: Mr. James T.

Morris; April 1992-April 2002: Ms. Catherine Bertini; April 1982-April

1992: Mr. James Ingram; Feb 1982-April 1982: Mr. Juan F. Yriart; May

1981-Feb 1982: Mr.B. De Azevedo Brito; Oct 1977-April 1981: Mr.

36

G.N. Vogel; July 1977-Sept 1977:Mr. Thomas C.M. Robinson; May

1976-June 1977: Mr. Thomas C.M. Robinson; July 1968-May 1976: Mr.

Francisco Aquino; Jan 1968-Aug 1968: Mr. Sushil K. Dev; May 1962

Dec 1967:Mr. A.H. Boerma. 23

2.2 UN World Food Programme’s Vision and Mission

Statement. United Nations system against hunger.

Today, WFP‘s greatest asset is its staff, a strong and dedicated workforce

of more than 10,000 women and men, 90 percent of whom are deployed

in the field, often under difficult conditions where security threats and

risks to personal safety are considerable.

WFP’s greatest strength is its global deep field presence combined with

its hunger expertise, which makes it unique within the international

system24.

WFP pursues a vision of the world in which every man, woman and

child has access at all times to the food needed for an active and healthy

life. WFP works towards this vision with its sister UN agencies in Rome

– the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International

Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – as well as other

government, UN and NGO partners.

Food security and agricultural development are major challenges facing

the world today.

The Rome-based agencies of the United Nations work together to meet

them. The agencies have specific and complementary roles.

Founded in 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the

world’s agricultural knowledge agency, providing policy and technical 23 See Dramatis Personae 24 WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME, WFP Strategic Plan 2008-2011, 2008, pg. 4.

37

assistance to developing countries to promote food security, nutrition and

sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas. FAO also

acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate

agreements and debate policy. FAO helps developing countries and

countries in transition modernize and improve agriculture, forestry and

fisheries practices and ensure good nutrition for all.

FAO's activities comprise of four main areas.

Placing information within reach: FAO serves as a knowledge network.

FAO utilises the expertise of its staff - agronomists, foresters, fisheries

and livestock specialists, nutritionists, social scientists, economists,

statisticians and other professionals - to collect, analyse and disseminate

data that aid development.

Sharing policy expertise: FAO lends its years of experience to member

countries in devising agricultural policy, supporting planning, drafting

effective legislation and creating national strategies to achieve rural

development and hunger alleviation goals.

Providing a meeting place for nations: On any given day, dozens of

policy-makers and experts from around the globe convene at FAO

headquarters or in its field offices to forge agreements on major food and

agriculture issues. As a neutral forum, FAO provides the setting where

rich and poor nations can come together to build common

understanding.

Bringing knowledge to the field: FAO’s breadth of knowledge is put to

the test in thousands of field projects throughout the world. FAO

mobilizes and manages millions of dollars provided by industrialized

countries, development banks and other sources to make sure the

projects achieve their goals. FAO provides the technical know-how and

in a few cases is a limited source of funds. In crisis situations, FAO

works side-by-side with the World Food Programme and other

38

humanitarian agencies to protect rural livelihoods and help people

rebuild their lives25.

The World Food Programme, as we have seen, is the food aid arm of the

United Nations system. Today, WFP’s key mission is to deliver food into

the hands of the hungry poor. The agency steps in during emergencies

and uses food to aid recovery after emergencies. WFP’s long term

approach to hunger helps the transition from recovery to development.

Food aid is one of the many instruments that can help to promote food

security, which is defined as access of all people at all times to the food

needed for an active and healthy life26.

The policies governing the use of World Food Programme food aid must

be oriented towards the objective of eradicating hunger and poverty. The

ultimate objective of food aid should be the elimination of the need for

food aid.

Consistent with its mandate, which also reflects the principle of

universality, WFP will continue to: use food aid to support economic and

social development; meet refugee and other emergency food needs, and

associated logistics support; promote world food security in accordance

with the recommendation of the United Nations and FAO.

WFP’s multilateral character is one of its greatest strengths. WFP will

exploit its capability to operate virtually everywhere in the developing

world, without regard to the political orientation of governments, and to

provide a neutral conduit for assistance in situations where many donor

countries could not directly provide assistance. WFP will provide

services: advice, good offices, logistic support and information; and

25 UNITED NATIONS, “Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)”, United Nation Handbook, 2007/2008. 26 FAO/WHO, “International Conference on Nutrition”, 1992.

39

support to countries in establishing and managing their own food

assistance programmes27.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was

established as an international financial institution in 1977, as one of the

major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. The Conference

resolved that an International Fund for Agricultural Development should

be established to finance agricultural development projects primarily for

food production in the developing countries. IFAD with its knowledge of

rural poverty and exclusive focus on poor rural people, designs and

implements programmes to help those people access the assets, services

and opportunities they need to overcome poverty.

IFAD's goal is to empower poor rural women and men in developing

countries to achieve higher incomes and improved food security.

IFAD will ensure that poor rural people have better access to, and the

skills and organization they need to take advantage of: Natural resources,

especially secure access to land and water, and improved natural

resource management and conservation practices; Improved agricultural

technologies and effective production services; A broad range of

financial services; Transparent and competitive markets for agricultural

inputs and produce; Opportunities for rural off-farm employment and

enterprise development; Local and national policy and programming

processes. All of IFAD's decisions - on regional, country and thematic

strategies, poverty reduction strategies, policy dialogue, and

development partners - are made with these principles and objectives in

mind. As reflected in the strategic framework, IFAD is committed to

achieving the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the target to

27 In December 1994, WFP’s governing body adopted the WFP Mission Statement, the first for an United Nations organization. The Mission Statement was based on a fundamental review of WFP policies, objectives and strategies that involved member states of WFP, non governmental organizations, United Nations and other agencies, academics and staff members. The WFP Mission Statement is to be considered as a living document that will be reviewed periodically. WFP, Mission Statement, January 2010.

40

halve the proportion of hungry and extremely poor people by 2015.

Through low-interest loans and grants, IFAD works with governments to

develop and finance programmes and projects that enable rural poor

people to overcome poverty themselves. Since starting operations in

1978, IFAD has invested US$11.3 billion in 829 projects and

programmes that have reached some 350 million poor rural people.

Governments and other financing sources in recipient countries,

including project participants, contributed US$9.8 billion, and

multilateral, bilateral and other donors provided approximately another

US$8.1 billion in co-financing. This represents a total investment of

about US$18 billion. IFAD tackles poverty not only as a lender, but also

as an advocate for rural poor people. Its multilateral base provides a

natural global platform to discuss important policy issues that influence

the lives of rural poor people, as well as to draw attention to the

centrality of rural development to meeting the Millennium Development

Goals28.

No single agency has either the resource or the capacity to deal with all

the problems of hunger and underdevelopment. Hence, the importance

WFP attaches to collaboration with other agencies, particularly with its

parent bodies, the United Nations and FAO. WFP will continue to work

closely with the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs,

UNHCR, other relevant agencies and non-governmental organizations

(NGOs) in the response to emergencies and humanitarian crises. As

previously mentioned, WFP, collaborates with FAO and IFAD,

especially in using food aid for achieving household food security. WFP

will continue to forge effective partnerships of action with the World

Bank and the International Monetary Fund, regional bodies and

28 DELLA FINA V., “Fondo Internazionale di sviluppo agricolo (IFAD)”, Enciclopedia del diritto, Milano, 1998, II aggiornato.

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institutions, bilateral donors and NGOs in support of economic and

social development and against hunger.

2.3 Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs)

In 2000, 189 countries endorsed eight Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs); the first on the list was to halve the proportion of the world’s

poor and hungry by 2015.

The MDGs represent a global partnership that has grown from the

commitments and targets established at the world summits in the 1990s.

Responding to the world’s development challenges and to the calls of

civil society, the MDGs promote poverty reduction, education, maternal

health, gender equality, and aim at combating child mortality, AIDS and

other diseases.

Set for the year 2015, the MDGs are an agreed set of goals that can be

achieved if all actors work together and do their part. Poor countries

have pledged to govern better and invest in their people through health

care and education. Rich countries have pledged to support them,

through aid, debt relief, and fairer trade.

The Eight Millennium Development Goals are: Eradicate Extreme

Poverty and Hunger (MDG1); Achieve Universal Primary Education

(MDG2); Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women (MDG3);

Reduce Child Mortality (MDG4); Improve Maternal Health (MDG5);

Combat HIV and AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases (MDG6); Ensure

Environmental Sustainability (MDG7); Develop a Global Partnership for

Development (MDG8) 29.

29 BAN KI-MOON, Secretary – General, United Nation , The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs, July 2009, pp. 6 - 19.

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With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve them, UN

Secretary – General Ban Ki Moon has called on world leaders to attend a

summit in New York in September 2010 to boost progress towards the

MDGs.

“We have made important progress in these efforts, and have many

successes on which to build. But we have been moving too slowly to meet

our goals. And today we face a global economic crisis whose full

repercussions have yet to be felt.

The global community cannot turn its back on the poor and the

vulnerable. We must strengthen global cooperation and solidarity, and

redouble our efforts to reach the MDGs and advance the broader

development agenda.”30

The World Food Programme’s work responds directly to all MDGs and

WFP’s objectives and projects contribute to achieving them31. WFP's

role in achieving the first MDG is clear. Whether through its emergency

operations or its relief or development projects, WFP's focus is on

making sure food reaches hungry people. WFP's mission statement

emphasises that WFP's activities aim to save lives, improve nutrition and

quality of life among vulnerable people and help promote self-reliance.

However, WFP's work also contributes toward the second MDG -

universal primary education. WFP school meals projects encourage

parents to keep their children in school.

WFP's food assistance can also play an important role in meeting another five of the eight MDGs: empowering women, reducing child and maternal mortality, improving maternal health, combating AIDS and ensuring environmental sustainability.

30 BAN KI-MOON, Secretary – General, United Nations , The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, July 2009, pg. 3. 31 WFP FACT AND FIGURE (attachment VII)

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2.4 World Hunger

According to the latest Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

statistics, there are more than 1 billion hungry people in the world

and 915 million of them are in developing countries32. There are over 1

billion hungry people in the world: more than the combined populations

of the United States, Canada and the European Union. They are of all

ages, from babies whose mothers cannot produce enough milk to the

elderly with no relatives to care for them. They are the unemployed

inhabitants of urban slums, the landless farmers tilling other people's

fields, the orphans of AIDS and the sick, who need special or increased

food intake to survive. The percentage of hungry people is highest in

east, central and southern Africa. Around three-quarters of

undernourished people live in low-income rural areas of developing

countries, principally in higher-risk farming areas. However, the share of

the hungry in urban areas is rising. Of the total number of over 1 billion

chronically hungry people, over half are in Asia and the Pacific and

about a quarter are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

They are distributed like this: 642 million in Asia and the Pacific; 265

million in Sub-Saharan Africa; 53 million in Latin America and the

Caribbean; 42 million in the Near East and North Africa.

32 FAO, news release, 19 June 2009.

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That means one in nearly six people do not get enough food to be healthy

and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number

one risk to health worldwide - greater than AIDS, malaria and

tuberculosis combined. Among the key causes of hunger are, natural

disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-

exploitation of the environment. Recently, financial and economic crises

have pushed more people into hunger. As well as the obvious sort of

hunger resulting from an empty stomach, there is also the hidden hunger

of micronutrient deficiencies which make people susceptible to

infectious diseases, impair physical and mental development, reduce

their labour productivity and increase the risk of premature death.

Hunger does not only weigh on the individual. It also imposes a crushing

economic burden on the developing world. The sensation of hunger, a

lack of food in your stomach, is universal. But there are different

manifestations of hunger which are each measured in different ways:

Under-nourishment33; Malnutrition34; Wasting35.

WFP, as the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger

worldwide, will continue to adapt and transform the way it works to

meet the immediate needs of the hungry.

33 Under-nourishment is used to describe the status of people whose food intake does not include enough calories (energy) to meet minimum physiological needs for an active life. At present, there are over 1 billion undernourished people worldwide, most of them in developing countries 34 Means 'badly nourished', but is more than a measure of what we eat or fail to eat. Malnutrition is characterised by inadequate intake of protein, energy and micronutrients and by frequent infections and diseases. Starved of the right nutrition, people will die from common infections like measles or diarrhoea. Malnutrition is measured not by how much food is eaten but by physical measurements of the body - weight or height - and age. Malnutrition covers a range of problems, such as being dangerously thin, being too short for one's age, being deficient in vitamins and minerals (such as lacking iron which makes you anaemic), or even being too fat (obese). It is measured using the following indicators: Wasting is an indicator of acute malnutrition that reflects a recent and severe process that has led to substantial weight loss. This is usually the result of starvation and/or disease. Stunting is an indicator of chronic malnutrition that reflects the long-term nutritional situation of a population. It is calculated by comparing the height-for-age of a child with a reference population of well nourished and healthy children. Underweight is measured by comparing the weight-for-age of a child with a reference population of well-nourished and healthy children. An estimated 146 million children in developing countries are underweight. 35 Wasting is an indicator of acute malnutrition that reflects a recent and severe process that has led to substantial weight loss. This is usually the result of starvation and/or disease.

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2.5 WFP Strategic Plan ( 2008 – 2011)

The Strategic Plan (2008-2011) lays out a framework for potential action

for WFP. The Strategic Objectives reflect the changing nature of food

aid and hunger and WFP’s history, experience and comparative

advantages. The Strategic Plan marks a historical shift from WFP as a

food aid agency to WFP as a food assistance agency. Its overarching

goal is to reduce dependency and to support governmental and global

efforts to ensure long term solutions to the hunger challenge.

WFP will focus on five Strategic Objectives: Save lives and protect

livelihoods in emergencies36; Prevent acute hunger and invest in disaster

preparedness and mitigation measures37; Restore and rebuild lives and

livelihoods in post conflict, post disaster or transition situations38;

36 Emergencies are defined as “Urgent situations in which there is a clear evidence that an event or a series of events has occurred which causes human suffering or imminently threatens human lives or livelihoods and which the government concerned has not the means to remedy; and it is a demonstrably abnormal event or series of events which produces dislocation in the life of a community on an exceptional scale”. When shocks or crises occur, the international community expects WFP to be ready to respond if national authorities need assistance. In its intervention, WFP will pay particular attention to needs assessment, targeting, food and nutritional needs of vulnerable groups and securing and maintaining humanitarian access. WFP is committed to fulfilling its various United Nations cluster leadership responsibilities in order to help ensure a coordinated and optimal system response to whatever needs may arise in emergencies. The Strategic Objective One mentions three goals: To save lives in emergencies and reduce acute malnutrition caused by shocks to below emergency levels; To protect livelihoods and enhance self-reliance in emergencies and early recovery; To reach refugees, IDPs and other vulnerable groups and communities whose food and nutrition security has been adversely affected by shocks. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 37 In many countries, the end of a disaster often becomes the precursor of the next one, either because the first shock has undermined the resilience capacities of countries, or because there is an underlying low level of disaster preparedness. There may be other destabilizing pressures – such as financial or economic volatility and fragility, soaring food prices or reduction in contingency food stocks and reserves – that can impact resilience at its core. These factors may be exacerbated by climate change. WFP already uses a wide range of tools to understand the nature and dimension of such pressures and disasters. In order to prevent outbreaks of acute hunger caused by economic shocks and disasters, WFP will support the establishment of early warning systems and vulnerability analysis capacities. Thus, WFP can help communities, governments and the international community get ahead of the hunger curve – and therefore fight hunger more effectively and efficiently – by focusing particular attention on preparedness and disaster risk reduction and mitigation. The Strategic Objective Two mentions two goals: To support and strengthen capacities of governments to prepare for, assess and respond to acute hunger arising from disaster; To support and strengthen resiliency of communities to shocks through safety nets or assess creation, including adaptation to climate change. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 38This Strategic Objective concerns WFP’s extended recovery work. Recovery situation in the transition between emergencies and development should represent a full – fledged context of intervention that involves specific needs and calls for appropriate responses. The approaches used in such situations needs to help facilitate the transition from relief and recovery to sustainable development.

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Reduce chronic hunger and undernutrition39; Strengthen the capacities

of countries to reduce hunger, including through hand-over strategies

and local purchase40.

Not all Strategic Objectives will apply to all situations and all countries.

Specific priorities will be set based on specific needs and priorities in a

country or region and in accordance with the comparative advantage that

WFP can bring in a particular time and place.

Success will depend not only on WFP’s own capacity, but also on the

extent to which WFP manages to be a partner for others – national

governments, other United Nations organizations, national and

international non-governmental organizations or the private sector.

WFP’s effort is an important building block in the fight against hunger,

but its effectiveness will be maximized only if accompanied by other

actors’ efforts or integrated into a broader alliance.

The main actors, and partners for WFP, on the front line of hunger are

national and local governments as well as the local communities.

Communities and governments have a primary responsibility for meeting Through this Strategic Objective, WFP will offer assistance in ways that contribute to the critical efforts of individuals, communities and countries to recover and rebuild in the longer term aftermath of an emergency. The Strategic Objective Three mentions three goals: To support the return of refugees and IDPs through food and nutrition assistance; To support the re-establishment of livelihoods, food and nutrition security of communities and families affected by shocks; To assist in establishing or rebuilding food supply or delivery capacities of countries and communities affected by shocks and help to avoid the resumption of conflicts. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 39 See Cap. 2 Par. 2.6 40 When governments make the fight against hunger and undernutrition a top priority, real progress can be achieved. WFP and its partners must work with national governments to ensure that hunger and undernutrition are not viewed as mere by-products of poverty, which it is assumed will disappear if and when poverty decreases. Instead, specific measures are required to integrate hunger-reduction measures into broader growth and poverty reduction strategies. Food and nutrition assistance programmes can and should be designed in a way that reaps double benefits for beneficiaries. Food and non food local purchasing activities are supporting the capacity of countries and communities to enhance employment opportunities and develop sustainable livelihoods. WFP is committed to utilizing its purchasing power, when and where possible, to develop suppliers’ capacities and build up with other partners complementary interventions aimed at reinforcing the supply side. Pilot local procurement activities can be mainstreamed into WFP’s procurement, practices and, more importantly, adopted and scaled up by national governments and other actors in agricultural sectors. It must be understood, however, that WFP’s top priority in procurement is to address humanitarian needs as effectively as possible. The Strategic Objective Five mentions three goals: To use purchasing power to support the sustainable development of food security systems, and transform food and nutrition assistance into a productive investment in local communities; To develop clear hand-over strategies to enhance nationally owned hunger solutions; To strengthen the capacity of countries to design, manage and implement tools, policies and programmes to predict and reduce hunger. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011.

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the hunger- related needs of their population. They also have unique

depth and breadth of knowledge about their people, including their

needs, vulnerability, customs and preferences. Moreover, they have often

developed tools and policies that are country-specific and are thus, the

best institutional and operational starting points for complementary

hunger-reduction interventions. The priority of communities’ and

governments’ external partners should be to help them pursue their

locally or nationally established priorities.

In emergency contexts, WFP can help governments act whether through

direct operational involvement or response coordination. Governments

should take the lead in disaster preparedness and response, coordination

among actors and contingency planning. In a recovery situation,

governments usually face difficult tasks with stretched capacities, and

WFP can help them restore and rebuild lives and livelihoods along the

priorities they define. In longer-term development, all WFP interventions

must be coherent with and aligned to governments’ priorities and

frameworks.

Partnership with the United Nations System agencies and Bretton Woods

Institutions are central to WFP’s work in all of its proposed strategic

objectives. Timely and effective response during a humanitarian

emergency requires close and effective partnership with not only FAO

and IFAD but also with the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian

Affairs (OCHA), the International Red Cross and Red Crescent

Movement, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),

and the World Health Organization (WHO). The partnership with

UNICEF is also critical to WFP’s work on nutrition, education, and

HIV/AIDS. Other important WFP partnerships to break the chronic

intergenerational cycle of hunger include the Joint United Nations

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Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNADIS) of which WFP is a co-sponsor, the

World Bank, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural

Research (CGIAR), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Development

Programme (UNPD) and the United Nations Population Fund

(UNFPA).41

NGOs are instrumental in increasing WFP’s global deep field presence.

Their work is essential in both short- and long-term responses to hunger.

Nowadays, WFP works closely with about 2,800 NGOs all over the

world. During emergency operations their value added includes

assessment, targeting, selection of appropriate responses and distribution

and delivery of assistance – particularly in situations where national

capacity in those areas is limited. Also, NGOs and civil society can raise

awareness on, and advocate for, long term commitments by governments

to prioritize hunger in their strategic and policy frameworks42.

Partnerships with the private sector are important too. Local and global

business can strengthen WFP’s response by providing critical material

assets related to ground and air transportation, as well as, ICT at the

onset of an emergency, through pre-arranged partnership structures.

Moreover, corporations can provide technical expertise and specialized

personnel in areas linked to WFP’s operational needs – such as nutrition,

security, logistics, and financial business modelling. Lastly, private

donors may directly support WFP operations and programmes in

developing countries, as shown by the on-going partnership with the Bill

& Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Alliance for Green Revolution in

Africa, whose goals include helping millions of smallholder farmers lift

themselves out of poverty.

41 UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, WHO, “Food and Nutrition Needs in Emergencies”, Geneva, 2002. 42 WFP, “WFP’s operational relationship with NGOs - Annual Report 2007”, Rome, 2008.

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The Strategic Plan reflects real-world challenges, including the recent

increased hunger caused by soaring food prices, restricted supplies, and

the difficult choices that the organization confronts from day to day.

The Strategic Plan, like WFP itself, is in part a reflection of international

realities – including the gaps and deficiencies in the broader international

humanitarian and development architecture. Support for recovery, in

particular in critical peace building situations, is often not sustained. The

gap between crises, recovery and sustainable longer-term solutions is

very frequently a chasm. Deploying WFP most effectively within this

broader global context is what the Strategic Plan is all about.

The global context in which WFP operates is rapidly changing. One

example of this is the rapid globalization of the hunger challenges

presented by climate change. The organization needs to respond in an

effective manner to emerging trends and challenges.

Despite WFP’s progress towards halving the proportion of the hungry

over the past decades, the absolute number of the hungry is growing and

thus there are new challenges facing the organization.

Economic shocks such as soaring food and fuel prices are diminishing

the purchasing power of some of the most vulnerable households,

exposing many millions to greater desperation and hunger. In many

regions climate change contributes to the destruction of livelihoods,

reduces agricultural yields and threatens lives, pushing even more people

into desperation.

Responding to those hunger challenges requires multi-faceted food

assistance policies that can address food availability, food access and

food utilization problems.

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2.6 Strategic Objective Four: Reduce Chronic Hunger and

Undernutrition

High rates of chronic hunger and undernutrition are the cause of high

mortality and hamper the development prospects of certain countries and

communities. Preventing deaths related to chronic hunger and

undernutrition is one of the greatest challenges of our time. In

accordance with the request and needs of governments and communities,

WFP will partner with others to support or implement programmes that

address chronic hunger and undernutrition.

WFP will particularly focus its activities on groups that are the most

vulnerable to the consequences of hunger – especially children and

women.

The Strategic Objective Four mentions three goals: To help countries

bring undernutrition below critical levels and break the intergenerational

cycle of chronic hunger43;To increase levels of education and basic

nutrition and health through food and nutrition security tools44;To meet

the food and nutrition food needs at those affected by HIV/AIDS,

tuberculosis and other pandemics45.

The tools and approaches used by WFP are extremely important in our

analysis:

43 WFP will support and implement activities that prevent the intergenerational cycle of chronic hunger from perpetuating itself and bring undernutrition (including micronutrient deficiencies) below critical levels. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 44 Poor level of education and health strongly affect the physical and intellectual growth of individuals, and constrain the economic and social development of nations. WFP will continue to work with governments, local communities and other partners to support and sometimes implement programmes that increase levels of formal and informal education as well as of basic nutrition and health, with particular attention given to women and children. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 45 The impact of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other pandemics are reversing hard-won development gains in certain countries and communities. WFP is committed to providing food and nutrition support in conjunction with partners and as an essential element to prevention, treatment and mitigation within national HIV programmes and strategies. WFP, WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011.

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Mother-and-child health and nutrition (MCHN) programmes46;

Programmes addressing and mitigating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis

and other pandemics47.

Policy and programmatic advice48;

School Feeding Programmes;

WFP partners with national governments, local communities and others

on school feeding programmes that enable millions of children each year

to concentrate on their classes rather than on hunger. Educators,

politicians and economists around the world, have embraced school

feeding – especially when food is produced and purchased locally – as an

intervention that breaks the cycle of hunger and poverty. Providing

meals at school encourages enrolment and attendance, particularly

amongst girls; improves learning through better concentration, making

other educative instruments more effective; helps promote good

nutrition; and makes it possible for poor families to send hungry children

to school rather than have them look for food or work.

School Feeding is also an ideal platform to deliver both macro and

micronutrients and develop the local production of complementary foods

that are crucial for school-age children to grow to their full physical and

46 WFP partners with governments, local communities and others to support or implement MCHN programmes that aim to improve the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age, as well as of pregnant and lactating women and prevent life-long consequences of poor nutrition at the early stages of life. A key element of this programme is supplementary feeding through local health clinics or community-based approaches. WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 47 As part of a comprehensive package of treatment, care and support for people living with HIV and/or tuberculosis, food and nutrition programmes are being implemented in many high-prevalence countries. Such programmes: enable food-insecure people to seek treatment; help optimize the benefits derived from treatment; facilitate nutritional recovery; support treatment adherence, particularly during the initial vulnerable period and enable children to get an education that helps protect their future. WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. WFP works with governments to ensure that food and nutrition support is included in national tuberculosis programmes and within its AIDS budget plan. WFP will work with governments, civil society and others to plan for and respond to the potential hunger-related consequences from a health crisis such as human influenza related to highly-pathogenic avian influenza virus. WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011. 48 The international community has strongly affirmed the primary responsibility of national governments in leading the fight against hunger and meeting the MDGs. WFP has a long and a successful history of working with governments to design and manage food and nutrition assistance programmes. In the changing environment of humanitarian and development aid, this essential aspect of WFP’s work is becoming even more relevant. WFP Strategic Plan 2008 – 2011.

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intellectual potential. Through “take-home rations”, school feeding

programmes encourage families to send girls to school or to open their

homes to orphans. Through its local purchase of food, school feeding can

also promote sustainable development solutions by supporting the

development of reliable markets for small farmers and local producers,

as well as helping them access those markets. Furthermore, school

feeding programmes represent a long term and sustainable solution to

hunger since their impact on education levels, especially those of

adolescent girls, will help break the intergenerational cycle of hunger

and undernutrition. Within this context, school feeding programmes can

transform schools into “development centres” for the whole community

by providing a “ready-to-use” channel through which a broader range of

services can be delivered. When a crisis strikes, school feeding

programmes can also play a particularly important role as a platform to

reach children in need.

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Chapter III

Food for Development: School Feeding Programme

3.1 Today’s School Feeding Policy (2008-2011)

“What is so clear is that we are beyond the debate about whether school

feeding makes sense as a way to reach the most vulnerable. It does.”49

The World Food Programme’s vision is to reduce hunger among

schoolchildren so that hunger is not an obstacle to their development.

WFP has 45 years of experience in school feeding, throughout which it

has helped millions of children become educated, productive adults.

These adults have created greater food security for their families with

healthier, better educated children. The benefits of school feeding and

education do translate to the next generations.

School feeding is an effective safety net50. It helps to protect vulnerable

children during times of crisis. It safeguards nutrition, education and

gender equality and provides a range of socio-economic benefits. School

feeding can also contribute to a much-needed sense of normality for

children living in insecure environments. A daily school meal serves as a

strong incentive to send children to school and ensure they attend

49 WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran and World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick. Foreward to: Bundy D., Burbano, C., Grosh, M., Gelli, A., Jukes, M. and Drake, L. 2009. Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development and Education Sector. Washington DC, WFP and World Bank. 50 Safety nets are a sub-set of a broader social protection system. Safety nets mostly include non-contributory transfers in cash or in-kind, conditional or unconditional, and other interventions to improve access to food and basic essentials, such as price subsidies. Depending on programme objectives and design features, safety nets can generate a variety of outcomes, including for examples improvements in nutrition, enhancements in education, or the transfer of income to targeted households. WFP, “WFP and Food-Based SafetyNets. PolicyPaper”, Rome, 2004.

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regularly. When local production contributes to school feeding

programmes, there are win-win spinoffs for local economies.

School feeding is sustainable. WFP has handed over school feeding

programmes to 31 national governments, which continue to provide

school feeding today.

In 2009, WFP estimated that 66 million children were hungry at school.

Today, every country in the world is seeking to provide food, in some

way and on some scale, to its schoolchildren. Few safety net

programmes provide so many multi- sectoral benefits - education gender

equality, food security poverty alleviation, nutrition and health – in one

single intervention.

WFP works with and alongside national governments, NGOs, United

Nations agencies, private partners and other stakeholders to provide

children with school meals. As the largest implementer of school feeding

programmes in the world, investing almost half a billion dollars per year,

WFP now supports the provision of meals to an average of 22 million

children each year, about half of whom are girls, in 70 countries. An

estimated $3.2 billion of dollars is needed to reach the 66 million

children that attend school hungry in developing countries.51 School

feeding responds directly to the Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs) related to hunger and poverty (MDG1), education (MDG2),

gender equality (MDG3), and contributes indirectly to all other MDGs.

School feeding is defined as “the provision of food to school children”.

There are as many types of programs as there are countries, but they can

be classified into two main groups based on their modalities:

In-school feeding, where children are fed in school;

51 WFP School Feeding Policy, WFP/EB.2/ 2009/4-A, 8 October 2009.

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In-school feeding can be divided into two common categories: programs

that provide meals52, and programs that provide high-energy biscuits or

snacks53.

Take-home ration54, where families are given food if children

attend school.

In some countries, in-school meals are combined with take-home rations

for particularly vulnerable students, including girls and children affected

by HIV, to generate greater impacts on school enrolment and retention

rates, and reduce gender on social gaps.

The addition of micronutrients to food (fortification), the delivery of

micronutrients in pills or suspensions (supplementation55), and the

provision of antihelmitic treatment (deworming56) are all cost-effective

ways of enhancing the nutrition and education of schoolchildren.

These actions are viewed as complementary in the sense that food could

be provided without these interventions, and because micronutrient 52For programs that provide meals, the primary objective is to provide breakfast, mid-morning meals, lunch, or a combination to alleviate short-term hunger, increase attending span, facilitate learning, and obviate the need for children to leave the school to find food. In-school meals also act as an incentive to increase school access. School meals can be prepared in school or in the community, or can be delivered from centralized kitchens. They can be an important source of micronutrients if prepared using fortified commodities, or if micronutrients powder is added during or after preparation. WFP School Feeding Policy, WFP/EB.2/ 2009/4-A, 8 October 2009 53 This program modality functions in a similar way to school meals, alleviating short-term hunger and micronutrients deficiencies, and improving learning. They can be part of a meal program, particularly during a full day at school, in which case they are given early in the day to alleviate short-term hunger. They are cheaper and easier to distribute than meals. They are particularly used in emergency or crisis contexts for rapid scale-up or in situations of poor school infrastructure and storage facilities. WFP School Feeding Policy, WFP/EB.2/ 2009/4-A, 8 October 2009 54 Take-home rations function in a similar manner to conditional cash transfers. They transfer food resources to families conditional upon school enrolment and regular attendance of children. Rations are given to families typically once a month or once a term. They increase school participation and probably learning. WFP School Feeding Policy, WFP/EB.2/ 2009/4-A, 8 October 2009 55 Micronutrients fortification is a low-cost means of including in meals or fortified biscuits or snacks the essential vitamins or minerals that may otherwise be deficient in the diet. The main micronutrients that are added are iron, iodine, vitamin A, B-vitamins, and zinc. Fortification increases the intake of micronutrients, thereby improving micronutrient status, preventing damage caused by micronutrient deficiencies, and increasing cognition and nutritional status. Bundy D., Burbano C., Grosh M., Gelli A., Jukes M. and Drake L., Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development and Education Sector. Washington DC, WFP and World Bank, 2009, pg. 9. 56 School-based deworming is a very cost-effective way of improving education outcomes and nutrition. It involves offering deworming tablets once or twice a year to all children in schools in infection endemic areas. Reducing the prevalence and intensity of worm infections in children enhances nutritional status, learning and cognition, and reduces absenteeism. Bundy D., Burbano C., Grosh M., Gelli A., Jukes M. and Drake L, Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development and Education Sector. Washington DC, WFP and World Bank, 2009, pg.10.

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supplements and deworming can be delivered independently of school

feeding. There is a strong case, however, that micronutrient fortification

should be an integral part of school feeding, and that deworming should

be conducted alongside school feeding wherever there is an

epidemiologically demonstrated need.

3.2 WFP’s Guiding Standards.

WFP will support governments in implementing school feeding

programmes that are designed in line with the Eight Standards Guiding

Sustainable and Affordable School Feeding Programmes57:

Sustainability58;

Sound Alignments with national policy frameworks59;

Stable funding and budgeting60;

Needs-based, cost effective quality programme design61;

Strong institutional arrangements for implementation, monitoring

and accountability62;

Strategy for local production and sourcing63;

57 See attachment VII “Indicators Associated with each Guiding Standards”. 58 Sustainability must be built into school feeding programmes from the outset. It is important that sustainability is embodied in a transition strategy agreed by the government, WFP and stakeholders, that includes timing, targets and benchmarks for achievement. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pg.13. 59 The inclusion of school feeding in national policy frameworks increases the potential for sustainability and quality of implementation. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pg.13. 60 Stable funding is a prerequisite for sustainability. The inclusion of school feeding in national planning and budgeting processes will ensure that it receives resources from national budgets. A national budget line for school feeding is needed for long term sustainability. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pg.13. 61 School feeding programmes must be based on needs and designed on the basis of an accurate assessment of the country context. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pag.14. 62 A government institution or ministry should be responsible for the implementation of the school feeding programme. Adequate resources, staff capacity, management skills, knowledge and technology must be made available. Robust implementation arrangements are necessary to ensure that food and resources are managed transparently through adequate monitoring and reporting mechanisms. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pag.14. 63Procuring food from local markets is crucial for achieving sustainability and stimulating local economies. A balance of international, national and local food procurement must be considered to support local economies without jeopardizing the food pipeline. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome , 2010, pag.14.

58

Strong partnerships and inter-sector coordination64;

Strong community participation and ownership65

3.3 Sustainability through capacity development

Well-designed school feeding programmes are sustainable. Over the past

45 years, WFP has handed over school feeding programmes to 31

countries, which are still operational today. Among those are two of the

largest school feeding programmes in the world: India and Brazil. More

recently, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Peru have made the transition from

receiving funding from external sources to providing nationally funded

support. The process of achieving sustainability takes time and school

feeding programmes go through many stages. The transition to

sustainable national programmes requires school feeding to be

mainstreamed in national strategies. As government capacity and

ownership develop from stage 1 to stage 5, governments assume greater

responsibility for school feeding programmes66.

64Well-designed programmes are multi-sectoral; they link school feeding, with health, nutrition and social protection programmes, and include strong operational partnerships and coordination mechanisms. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pag.14. 65 Locally owned school feeding programmes that respond to community needs and incorporate some form of parental or community contributions are the strongest. WFP, “School Feeding – Background on new Direction”, Rome, 2010, pag.14. 66 Any reading of the school feeding literature will show, as recurrent themes, the debate around the sustainability of the programmes and the need for an “exit strategy” (Levinger 1986, 1996, 2005; Del Rosso and Marek 1996, Del Rosso 1999; Bundy and Strickland 2000; WFP 2003). We conclude that the concept of a school feeding exit strategy has tended to confound thinking about the longer-term future of school feeding programs. In reality, many countries do not seek to exit from providing food to their schoolchildren. On the contrary, many countries appear to seek to expand the coverage of their programs and establish them as national programs mainstreamed into national policy. The aim is not to exit in the sense of closing down the programs, but rather to transition from externally supported projects to national programs. D. BUNDY, C. BURBANO, M. GROSH, A. GELLI, M.JUKES, L.DRAKE, Rethinking school feeding. Social safety nets, child development, and the education sector, The World Bank, Washington, 2009, pg 33.

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Table 3.1 – Stages of transitions Feed minds, change lives, school feeding: highlights and new directions. WFP will ensure that the eight quality standards are embedded into its

programmes. WFP will ensure that all programmes include a transition

strategy that will clearly specify how WFP and the government will

work towards putting in place the elements for a sustainable school

feeding programme. The strategy will be based on a comprehensive

assessment and will consider countries’ financial and technical resource

capacities and the potential for these resource capacities to increase. The

strategy will include clear and realistic objectives, targets, milestones

and timelines with actions and responsibilities for an eventual

government take-over.

Where a government has requested WFP support, WFP will continue

school feeding activities as resources permit until the government has the

financial and technical capacity to successfully manage and implement

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its school feeding programme. Building capacity and facilitating

transition are important, but WFP’s implementation support is likely to

continue to be required in coordination with NGO and government

programmes for several years as government capacity grows. WFP will

work with governments to harmonize all school feeding programmes

implemented in the country. Multi-sectoral technical support and

capacity development throughout the project, during phasing out and

beyond, is particularly important for ensuring an adequate transfer of

skills and maintaining benefits long after external assistance has ended.

Training that involves community leaders and government officials,

builds layers of capacity at all levels to manage school feeding

programmes efficiently. WFP aims to work with governments to

strengthen capacity. Local purchase for supplying commodities to school

feeding programmes is an important tool to ensure sustainability and

transition. Linking school feeding programmes and locally produced

food, including local capacity to mill and fortify benefits children, small

farmers and local economies. WFP aim to create synergies between

school feeding programmes and other social and agricultural

programmes to meet the educational needs of children while supporting

agricultural and economic development.

As WFP strengthens its support to national school feeding programmes,

shifts from food aid to food assistance and increases its school feeding

toolkit, there will be increased scope to support local procurement and to

use cash resources to support governments in assessing the potential of

different school-feeding models.

Different models - centralized, decentralized, or school based - need to

be considered and adapted to each context:

61

Centralized: food is imported or procured centrally for

distribution to the schools. Traditional school feeding

programmes use this model;

Decentralized: Cash is transferred by the government to local

authorities who contract suppliers to provide food for school

meals;

School-based: Schools receive cash or vouchers from the

government or others to purchase food from markets, farmers or

cooperatives;

Community- based: Communities that can afford to provide food

to the schools, send their children to school with a packed lunch

or pay schools to provide meals;

Combination: A combination of models caters for different

contexts.

WFP will support national governments to study the appropriateness and

effectiveness of the possible implementation models67.

67 WFP, “WFP School Feeding Policy”, October 2009, pg.17ss.

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Chapter IV

Emergency Operations (EMOPs) and Protracted

Relief and Recovery Operations (PRROs): policies

and principles

4.1 Emergency Operations

For the purpose of WFP, Emergencies are defined as: “Urgent situations

in which there is a clear evidence that an event or series of events has

occurred which causes human suffering or imminently threatens human

lives or livelihoods and which the government concerned has not the

means to remedy; and it is a demonstrably abnormal event or series of

events which produces dislocation in the life of a community on an

exceptional scale”68.

The event or series of events may comprise of one or a combination of

the following: Sudden calamities such as earthquakes, floods, locust

infestations and similar unforeseen disasters; Man-made emergencies

resulting in an influx of refugees or the internal displacement of

populations or in the suffering of otherwise affected populations; Food

scarcity conditions owing to slow-onset events such as drought, crop

failures, pests, and diseases that result in an erosion of communities and

vulnerable population’s capacity to meet their food needs; Severe food

access or availability conditions resulting from sudden economic shocks,

market failure, or economic collapse and that result in an erosion of

communities and vulnerable populations’ capacity to meet their food

68 WFP, “Policies: EMPOs and PRROs policies and principles”, Rome, 2010.

63

needs; A complex emergency for which the Government of the affected

country or the Secretary-General of the United Nations has requested the

support of WFP.

The policies, objectives, programme and funding mechanisms for WFP

assistance are the same for all types of emergencies. Each situation is

assessed individually and the response geared to the particular situation.

However, WFP distinguished four main types of emergencies: Sudden

disasters – natural or technological disasters which damage crops and

food stocks, disrupt food supply and marketing system, and/or disrupt

economic activities and livelihoods; Slow-onset crisis - when drought,

crop failure or a severe economic crisis erodes livelihoods and

undermines food supply system and hence the abilities of vulnerable

households to meet their food needs and communities to support them;

Complex emergencies - when conflict and widespread social economic

disruption result in severe humanitarian crisis and food insecurity;

Refugee influxes - when events in a neighbouring country cause people

to cross the border in search of security, food and other survival needs,

imposing extraordinary demands on the food supply system, natural and

other resources of the host country.

Sudden disasters, slow-onset crisis and especially complex emergencies

can all result in population displacement, in groups such as, internally

displaced persons (IDPs) whose situation are usually more difficult and

the needs more acute than those of resident, non – displaced populations.

All these situations can give rise to requirements for relief and/or

recovery assistance that may be country wider or localized in particular

areas.

Assistance may be needed for a few months (following many sudden

disasters), about a year (in many situation of crop failure) or several

years (in many complex and refugee emergencies).

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In the event of an emergency, WFP may provide advice and assistance to

the government, other concerned agencies and local authorities in:

assessing requirements for emergency food aid, planning and managing

food aid interventions and coordinating deliveries as all international

food aid. WFP may provide target food aid, when appropriate, to meet

assessed emergency food needs and support recovery, together with

associated logistics and other (non-food) support, when needed, to help

ensure the delivery and distribution of that food in its use by the

beneficiaries.

In a major or complex emergency, WFP assures: the assessment and

monitoring of food aid needs, coordinates the delivery of international

food aid, provides logistic expertise and organizes the delivery of WFP-

provided commodities and, when requested, common logistic services

for the wider international humanitarian community, arranges

distributions of WFP-provided commodities to beneficiaries and the

implementation of food for work and other projects, and where

appropriate, with selected partners, monitoring the handling, distribution

and use of WFP food.

In all cases, WFP has the responsibility to see that the aid provided, is

received, handled and utilized as efficiently and effectively as possible in

the context of specific agreements signed with the government and any

other involved organizations. WFP also has the responsibility to see that

the defined objectives are achieved, to every extent possible, and that the

food does reach the intended beneficiaries.

WFP has a humanitarian duty to use its influence to try and ensure that

provision is made for other basic needs and essential services required by

the affected population, particularly water supplies, sanitation health

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care, basic shelter and security. These are also necessary to ensure the

effectiveness of WFP food aid69.

The general responsibilities of the Government of an emergency-affected

country in relation to the provision of food and related areas includes:

Government responsibility for emergency response, responsibility in

connection with WFP food aid, and Government action. In a complex

emergency when there are areas not controlled by the government or

there is no effective government, WFP may have to assume many of

these responsibilities in relation to areas not under government control,

in agreement with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator.

Government responsibility for emergency response

The national government has a primary responsibility to provide relief

and other assistance to the affected population and, as necessary, to

request, co-ordinate and make arrangements for the utilization of

international assistance70.

While WFP, bilateral and other donors are normally ready and able to

assist in major emergencies, this should not deter the efforts of

developing countries to achieve self-reliance. It is the countries

themselves that must make major efforts to solve their own food

problems, establish their own food security system, strengthen their

internal marketing and distribution arrangements and establish food

reserve stocks within their capacity to do so.

69 WFP, “Targeting in Emergencies”, Rome, 2009. 70 Specifically, the government has the responsibility to: initiate a response by mobilizing available domestic and other in-country resources; issue an appeal/request if international assistance is required; ensure that emergency food aid, when received, is in fact made available to the affected persons promptly; coordinate international relief and ensure its integration in the national relief and recovery strategy and provide reports and accounts on the use made of commodities provided by WFP. WFP, “Policies: EMPOs and PRROs policies and principles”, Rome, 2010

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Responsibility in connection with WFP food aid

With respect to food aid commodities provided by WFP, the

Government, or agencies designated by it are responsible for

implementation71.

Action to be taken by the Government

Governments are expected to mobilize and use food stocks available in

the country to initiate food relief operations, where such are required.

National security or reserve stocks should be used, where appropriate.

Arrangements should be made to borrow commodities from other

projects and organizations, where necessary to ensure timely distribution,

or to arrange commodity exchanges between different bodies where this

can reduce the total food movement required and therefore, economize

on transport costs.

4.2 Protracted Relief and Recovery Operations

On the other hand, Relief is the alleviation or removal of distress –

financial or practical assistance given to those in difficulty.72

For WFP, in the context of emergencies affecting food security, “Relief

is assistance provided to enable people affected by a crisis to meet their

nutritional and related needs (saving lives) with dignity and without

resorting to activities that undermine their future food security

(protecting livelihood).”73

71 This includes: receiving the supplies, including assuring the prompt discharge from vessels/railway wagons/trucks and clearance through customs; arranging adequate storage, transport, and distribution within the country, including any required reconditioning, packaging, preserving and maintaining of condition from the point of transfer of title and maintaining appropriate records and accounts, including documenting any losses and arranging the appropriate disposal of any spoilt commodities, and providing reports to WFP. WFP, “Policies: EMPOs and PRROs policies and principles”, Rome, 2010 72 Concise Oxford English Dictionary. 73 WFP, “Policies: EMOPs and PRROs policies and principles”, Rome, 2010.

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Food (or cash) relief may be needed when a crisis has temporarily

deprived people of their means of livelihood and access to food, and

until they are again able to acquire sufficient appropriate food for

themselves. The need may be for a short period in many sudden, acute

emergencies, but for an extended (“protracted”) period for refugees and

internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have little access to land or

employment and in complex emergencies when there is a continuous

disruption of agricultural and other economic activities.

Recovery implies “a return to a normal condition” and “something

gained or restored in recovering”. For WFP, in the context of

emergencies affecting food security, “Recovery is a process that occurs

at a various level (individual, household, community, country) following

a shock (human-made or natural disaster) when, on the basis of existing

capacities and, if necessary, with externally provided assistance, there is

a return to the level of food security that existed prior to the shock

(livelihoods are restored)”.74

Recovery aims to achieve outcomes similar to those sought in

development with a focus on long term and sustainable results in line

with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Recovery starts as soon as people have assured their immediate survival

and are able to begin thinking about rebuilding their lives and

livelihoods.

WFP seeks to assure the prompt delivery and distribution of

humanitarian relief where necessary, to save lives. At the same time,

WFP aims to use emergency assistance in a way that serves both relief

and development purposes.

WFP has two goals in emergencies (and for EMOPs and PRROs): to

save lives and protect nutritional status threatened due to food insecurity 74 WFP, “Policies: EMOPs and PRROs policies and principles”, Rome, 2010.

68

and to protect and restore livelihoods and help people recover to at least

their former level of food security.

While saving lives by combating acute hunger and malnutrition may be

an over-riding priority in an acute, life-threatening crisis, WFP seeks to

contribute to recovery and building the self-reliance of poor people and

communities from the earliest possible moment, by helping to restore

livelihoods.

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Chapter V

Case Study:

The Transition Process of School Feeding

in El Salvador

5.1 Overview

El Salvador, with its 5.7 million inhabitants (in addition to the 2 million

plus residing abroad), is a middle income country with profound

inequalities in the distribution of wealth and persisting profound levels of

poverty. The food and nutritional security situation is of concern with an

estimated 16.3 percent of rural families not having sufficient earnings to

cover the costs of the basic food basket. Under-nutrition figures are also

worrisome: chronic under-nutrition among children under 5 years of age

is 18.9% nationally, reaching 25.6% in rural areas and nearly 50% in the

most vulnerable and marginal locations. Respiratory infections and

diarrhoea continue to be the main causes of morbidity among children.

Over the past 10 years, the country has been harshly hit by natural

disasters, the most significant of which have been Hurricane Mitch

(1998), two earthquakes mostly affecting the Western region (2001), as

well as Tropical Storm Stan (2005). In addition to their direct impact on

the life and livelihoods of thousands, this chain of disasters perpetrates

the cycle of poverty and under-nourishment among the most vulnerable

communities. It is anticipated that the country’s vulnerability to disasters

will further deteriorate due to the effects of climate change.

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The already fragile situation of vulnerability to food and nutritional

insecurity among a large part of the poor urban and rural population has

been exacerbated over the last two years by the global phenomenon of

food prices increases, which severely impacted poor Salvadoran

households’ purchasing power and access to appropriate food and

nutrition. As a result, rural families started engaging in potentially

harmful coping strategies. Moreover, official statistics indicate that

during the period 2006-2007, poverty has deepened and become more

widespread, rising from 30.7 to 34.6 % of the total population.

In this context, WFP in El Salvador played a critical role by:

Providing analytical tools and inputs, for instance by launching

and coordinating a regional study and by hosting a regional forum

on Markets, Prices and Food and Nutritional Security in Central

America. These initiatives provided fresh insights on the

dynamics of the problem, and allowed in-depth information

sharing for decision makers;

Complementing and accompanying the efforts of the Government

of El Salvador in strengthening social protection initiatives and

programmes, as well as food production and income generation

interventions.

WFP is working to connect farmers in El Salvador to markets through

the Purchase for Progress initiative.

In El Salvador WFP works with a wide range of partners including

Government, regional and international institutions, NGOs, the UN

system and the private sector, and at different levels, from policy

development to operational implementation in the field. The key areas of

intervention can be summarized as follows:

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School Meals: This is one of WFP’s flagship programmes in the

country, which was successfully institutionalized under the full

responsibility of the Ministry of Education at the end of 2007.

Most importantly, the very successful hand over to the

Government resulted in a further strengthening of the partnership

between the two institutions, with the signing of a new

agreement, whereby WFP is assisting national institutions in the

procurement, logistics and capacity development of the National

School Feeding Programme, now reaching over 875,000 school

children in about 4150 schools;

Mother and Child Health and Nutrition: interventions targeting

roughly 55,000 vulnerable children under five, lactating mothers

and pregnant women, in collaboration with and support to the

Ministry of Health’s services;

Regional Relief and Recovery Operation: implemented to protect

vulnerable populations and enhance their ability to respond to

recurrent economic and natural disasters shocks. It includes relief,

food-for-work and food-for-asset as well as capacity development

activities with an emphasis on agricultural production and income

diversification;

Purchase for Progress (P4P): Through this new modality WFP

seeks to reduce agricultural households’ vulnerability to food

insecurity by leveraging its purchasing power, strengthening local

production capacity and stimulating local food markets;

Emergency Preparedness and Response: WFP El Salvador

provides leadership and support at both the national and regional

level in this competence area, including: a) managing the WFP

Regional Humanitarian Response Centre for Central America

(which since its establishment in mid-2007 already assisted major

72

emergencies in Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Belize and others); b)

leading the development of innovative web based Early-Warning

Systems (SATCA web, or Sistema de Alerta Temprana para

Centro America), which has improved the system wide capacity

to anticipate potential natural disasters; c) strengthening national

and regional Food Security Monitoring and Nutritional

Surveillance Systems to help take informed decisions and

anticipate a nutritional crisis; d) by working on disaster

preparedness, mitigation and response competences and

capacities always in support to national and regional institutions.

Capacity development and Public Policies: WFP El Salvador is a

strong advocate of capacity development activities, which cut

across the intervention areas of the Country Office; and it works

intensively in supporting national institutions in public policy

development, with a special focus on policies directed to

enhancing social protection for the most vulnerable, and fighting

child hunger and undernutrition.

Finally, WFP El Salvador is currently working on strengthening

its focus on Climate Change issues, given the country’s high

vulnerability and the potential consequences that the CC

phenomena is expected to have on people food and nutritional

security75.

75 WFP, “Learning from Experience. Good Practices from 45 year of School Feeding”, Rome, 2009, pp.38 ss.

73

5.2 A successful handover experience

In 2008, the school feeding program in El Salvador became wholly

owned and implemented by the government after 23 years of reliance on

implementation partnerships, principally with the World Food

Programme (WFP). The programme started during the country’s internal

crisis in 1984, planning to reach 200,000 students from preschool

through grade six in rural areas. In 1997, five years after the signing of

the peace accords, the government began to take the programme

management responsibilities while WFP withdrew from departments no

longer classified as among the most food insecure.

Currently, the government receives external support from WFP for

technical assistance, logistics, and procurement trough a trust fund that

was established in 2008. Through this agreement, WFP is piloting

procurement innovation under its corporate Purchase for Progress

initiative, which aims to link local procurement with the school feeding

program.

In 2009, the government of El Salvador and WFP decided to carry out a

study of the evolution of the school feeding programme in El Salvador

from 1984 to 2008 to document the process of transition to a nationally

led program.

The study covers school feeding activities from 1984 to 2008. There is a

general gap in information from 1984 to 1992. Data from 1992 through

early 2009 are fairly consistent, although there are some discrepancies

between government and WFP sources. Here we present a preliminary

analysis with the information available. The findings should be

interpreted as a work in progress because more information will be

collected in the future.

74

The study is structured around two simple questions:

Where are we now? To establish the current status and

achievements of the program.

How did we get here? To identify the series of action taken that

led to that result.

5.3 The current status of School Feeding

in El Salvador

The school feeding program in El Salvador annually reaches around

870,000 children, ages 5 to 15 years, in all rural and low-income urban

areas. It is implemented as a social development program with the

objectives of meeting the immediate food requirements of children,

increasing enrolment and retention and reducing absenteeism, and

improving the health habits of assisted children. School feeding also has

a social protection role in the country, implicitly transferring resources to

poor households.

School feeding in El Salvador has benefited from the support of several

high-level political champions who have advocated the programme’s

expansion and helped to ensure its sustainability. Currently, school

feeding is at the cornerstone of the country’s multisectoral development

program centred on children and youth called, Esquela Saludable

(Healthy Schools).

This section explores the characteristics of the program on five levels:

Policy framework; Institutional framework; Financial framework;

Design and implementation; School – level arrangements and

infrastructure.

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5.3.1 The National Policy Framework

School feeding is part of a wider multisectoral school health and

nutrition initiative, called Esquela Saludable, managed by a division in

charge of flagship social programs, which is attached to the President’s

office, led by the first Lady. The program is also in the National

Education Sector Plan, in the National Government Plan, and most

importantly in the operational plans of the Ministry of Education, which

determines the budgetary requirements of the program.

According to government officials, one of the most important factors for

the sustainability of the program is whether there is a political and

financial commitment to the program. In the case of El Salvador,

commitments exist at a presidential and ministerial level and there is a

budget line for the program within the national budget.

5.3.2 The Institutional Framework

As mentioned above, the program is part of the multisectoral initiative

managed by a division attached to the President’s Office. But, the

responsibility to design, manage, and implement the program lies with

the Ministry of Education. A unit within the ministry that manages

programs that are considered to be complementary to the provision of

basic education (for example, life skills, health and nutrition, school

feeding), is responsible for day-to-day activities. The unit has a director

and 10 government officials assigned full time to the program, and an

operational budget.

Oversight and coordination for Escuela Saludable are managed through a

National Steering Committee chaired by the First Lady. Members

76

include the Ministers of Education, Health, Agriculture, and Public

Works. There is also a Technical Working Group in charge of following

up decisions made by the Steering Committee.

El Salvador has 14 departments and in each there is a multisectoral team

in charge of the program that manages activities at a local level.

At the municipal level there are also staff and capacity for storage and

distribution of food. At the school level, a school feeding committee

headed by the director of the school and composed of parents and

teachers oversee the daily implementation of the program.

5.3.3 The Financial Framework

The program is currently financed exclusively with government funds.

The majority of the program’s requirements are covered through regular

funds, following a 2005 decision by the Legislative Assembly to

establish a budget line for school feeding. The rest of the requirements

are covered through a trust fund that was established in 1999 with the

proceeds from the privatization of a national telecommunications

company. A national law requires that the interest generated by this fund

be allocated to social programs, including school feeding. In 2008, the

trust fund provided around US$3 million for school feeding. School

feeding is embedded in the Ministry of Education’s annual budget. The

budget for school feeding in 2009 is US$17 million.

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5.3.4 Program design and implementation

The program currently provides a standardized on-site meal to more than

870,000 children. The meal provides about 26 percent and 20 percent of

daily requirements for calories and protein, respectively. The food basket

is made up of rice, oil, fortified drink, beans, milk, and sugar.

The program is targeted to children from 5 to 15 years old (pre-primary,

primary, and the first three grades of secondary) in all public schools in

rural and low-income urban areas of the country. It is implemented in all

14 departments.

The ministry has a monitoring and evaluation system, managed at a

central level.

Although the government has fully taken over the management and

financial responsibilities of the program, the Ministry of Education relies

on external support for technical assistance to improve the efficiency of

school feeding. Under a new agreement signed between the ministry and

WFP in 2008, WFP assists the government with procurement and

logistics for school feeding, and will undertake a study to redesign the

food basket, training and sensitization at the local level, a review of the

targeting procedures, and the establishment of a strategic food reserve

for the program. These activities are done with national resources.

By leveraging its experience in food procurement in the region, WFP has

been able to increase the efficiency of the procurement process. In 2008,

WFP was able to buy all the food requirements of the program with less

money than planned, generating savings for the government of about

US$3 million. Savings were then used to expand coverage of the

program and increase the food basket. Procurement is done nationally

and regionally because there are seasonal food deficit periods in the

78

country. There are plans to explore local purchase mechanisms under

WFP’s new Purchase for Progress initiative.

5.3.5 School-level arrangements and infrastructure

Food deliveries are done three times per year, and deposited in

government owned warehouses at the municipal level in each

department. Parent/teacher committees are in charge of picking up the

food from these delivery points, taking it to the schools, and storing and

managing it for daily distribution.

Community committees are responsible for cooking and distributing the

food to the children daily. The committees can choose whether to hire

cooks, pay community members, or volunteer. A baseline survey done in

early 2009 indicates that about 70 percent of the schools that were visited

depend on volunteers to cook the food. These are generally women,

mothers of children in the school. In about 30 percent of the cases, the

committees hire cooks.

As a result of extensive training and sensitization over the life of the

program, community participation and ownership is very high. The same

baseline survey indicates that in almost 80 percent of the schools visited,

parents participate in the cooking of the food, and in 70 percent of the

schools they participate in the distribution of the food to the children.

Adequate infrastructure at school level is a concern. About 67 percent of

the schools have proper kitchen facilities. In the remaining 33 percent of

schools, parents have to cook the food outside of school premises. The

majority of schools do not have appropriate eating areas for children and

almost 60 percent of schools lack potable water for cooking. These are

some of the challenges that will be tackled in the coming years.

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5.4 A preliminary Study of the Transition Process of

School Feeding in El Salvador

The transition to a nationally owned school feeding program in El

Salvador took approximately 23 years to complete. This section

reconstructs the chronology, based on literature reviews and interviews

with government and WFP staff.

5.4.1 The Transition Process: Milestones

The transition to a nationally owned school feeding program in El

Salvador took 23 years, as figure A1.1 illustrates.

The program started in 1984 relying mainly on WFP for the funding and

implementation (stage 1). In 1996, 12 years later, the program was

80

inserted into a wider national school health program, Escuela Saludable,

an initiative led by the country’s First Lady.

During this period, funds from donors (mainly the U.S. Agency for

International Development) were secured to allow the government to

start taking over designated portions of the program. In 2005, the

Legislative Assembly approved a budget line for school feeding,

institutionalizing the program within the national budget. The final

handover of responsibilities from WFP to the government occurred at the

end of 2007 (stage 5). Recently, the government requested WFP’s

support to manage the procurement and logistics of food commodities

for the program using national funding under a trust fund.

5.4.2 Steps of the Process in El Salvador

Figure A1.2 presents a schematic representation of the transition and the

main actions that took place during the transition.

Laying the foundations (1984–95). During the first 11 years of

implementation the program depended on WFP resources and

capacity to operate. In that time, aside from food assistance, WFP

also supported the Ministry of Education in building the

institutional framework that would later support the program

(including creating the program’s technical and steering

committee, and setting up a designated unit within the Ministry of

Education). This process created the foundations that would later

support the program within the Ministry of Education.

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Institutionalizing the Program (1996–2005). The period from

1996 to 2005 appears to be the critical period of transition.

During this time, the government identified school feeding as a

strategic program for the development of the country, inserted

school feeding in the broader policy framework, explored sources

of funding other than WFP, explored different modalities of

implementation—including several changes in the food basket

and in the delivery mechanisms—and increased its capacity to

implement the program through extensive training. This period

culminated with a stable source of funding for the program

coming from the national budget, which effectively

institutionalized the program and enhanced its sustainability

considerably. This transition appears to have benefited from the

leadership of high-level political champions, including two First

Ladies and the current Minister of Education. Extensive capacity

development was undertaken during this period.

Learning by Doing and Looking Ahead (2006–08). The ministry

is increasingly confronted with several challenges of

implementation related to the complete ownership of the

program. According to government officials, the most

challenging aspect of implementing the program has been the

procurement and logistics arrangements, which are the two

critical elements in service delivery for food-based programs.

This new responsibility seems to have significantly burdened the

ministry, especially in relation to its main responsibility related to

education. The lack of experience in procurement, coupled with

extremely high food prices in the local market and changes in

national legislation related to procurement, seem to have put the

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pipeline of the program in danger. In 2007 the ministry had

planned to organize three food deliveries to the schools and could

only deliver two, which left the schools without food during the

last part of the year. As a consequence, the ministry requested

WFP’s assistance as a strategic partner for the program. Under

this innovative arrangement, the ministry transfers resources to

WFP under a trust fund for the procurement and delivery of food

to the schools. WFP also provides technical assistance in the

design and management of the program76.

76 D. BUNDY, C. BURBANO, M. GROSH, A. GELLI, M.JUKES, L.DRAKE, “Rethinking school feeding. Social safety nets, child development, and the education sector”, The World Bank, Washington, 2009, pp. 99 ss.

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Chapter VI

Case Study: first WFP Emergency Operations.

Report on Iran, Thailand, Algeria, Morocco,

Tanganyika

During the period from October 1962 to March 1963, the World Food

Programme rendered assistance to the Government of Iran, Thailand,

Algeria, Morocco and Tanganyika for relief of emergencies involving

food shortage.

The WFP’s governing body, the Intergovernmental Committee (IGC)

realised that “the experience of these operations, which were the first to

be undertaken by WFP, has shown that delays can occur at different

stages, and the Executive Director believes that with the concerted effort

of WFP and the donor and recipient countries the time spent for each

stage mentioned could be minimised in future emergency operations. The

method suggested for joint consultations could shorten the time taken for

reaching a decision as to the nature and the extent of the assistance to be

provided by WFP”.77

6.1 Iran

A disastrous earthquake occurred on the night of 1 September 1962 and

caused extensive loss of life and property in the Hamdan-Jasvin-Saveh

region of the country. Some 12,000 people lost their lives and 15,000

77 WFP, “Third Session of the Internal Committee” , Rome, 13 to 18 May 1963.

84

homes were destroyed. Most of the grain which had been recently

harvested was lost, buried in the rubble, and thousands of livestock were

killed.

Most of the food needed from outside the country for the relief of the

victims of the disaster was made available by government and various

relief agencies. The World Food Programme was called upon to provide

270 tons of sugar and 27 tons of tea for the sustenance of the victims,

especially during the winter months and to replace up to 1500 tons of

wheat which the Government would procure for seed purposes from

locally available food stocks.

As the amount of sugar specifically pledged to WFP was too small, the

Executive Director requested the Government of India for the supply of

the needed quantity against India commodities pledge to the content of

which was unspecified at the time. The Government was able to comply

with the request and 270 tons was procured and shipped to Iran, arriving

in the second week of February 1963.

The Government of Indonesia offered to supply tea that was already

stored at the ports. Attempts to lift the cargo were, however,

unsuccessful because procedural difficulties in connection with

exporting could not be resolved in time for shipment in the vessels

arranged locally by WFP. India was then requested to also supply the tea

and 27 tons were shipped to Iran which arrived, third week of March,

1963.

The distribution of the commodities to beneficiaries was undertaken by

the Government of Iran with the assistance of CARE.

The supply of wheat in replacement of the stocks procured by the

Government, for use as seed, would be undertaken when the quantity so

procured was definitely known.

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6.2 Thailand

Thailand was ravaged by a severe hurricane in October 1962 in the six

provinces of the southern region. Over 43,000 houses were damaged and

10,300 people lost 62 fishing boats and some 65,000 metres fishing nets,

of which they largely depended on for their livelihood.

Feeding the homeless and jobless people for about 90 days, the

Government was able to supply enough rice, but it needed protein-rich

food to supplement the rice diet. The WFP consequently requested to

provide 55 tons of canned fish and 10 tons of condensed milk.

The Programme was able to meet these food needs in good time thanks

to the rapid action taken by the Governments of The Netherlands and

Australia. This was following a request made to them by the Executive

Director in supplying these commodities against their pledges and

shipping them to Bangkok.

The Government of The Netherlands immediately made available, in

Bangkok, 10 tons of condensed milk. This came out of the commercial

stock held by the representative of a Dutch firm and was followed

closely by an equivalent consignment from the Netherlands to replenish

the already drawn upon commercial stock. Fifty-five tons of canned fish

were procured in the Netherlands and shipped to Bangkok.

Although canned beef was not mentioned in Australia’s pledge, the

Government responded to the Executive Director’s requested for its

supply and shipped 55 tons to Thailand on the first available vessel.

The Government of Thailand distributed the commodities to the affected

areas through the Department of Welfare.

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6.3 Algeria

In Algeria, the government was faced with the problem of relocating and

providing food to millions of underfed people. These people consisted

mostly of refugees returning from Morocco and Tunisia and those

displaced by military operations. Assistance was requested by the

government to the World Food Programme in November 1962. The

Programme supplied 10,000 tons of dried beans which was sufficient for

four months. This was taken out of the commodities pledge of the United

Arab Republic.

Six thousand two hundred tons of beans were shipped in two chartered

vessels, and reached the designated Algerian ports in the third and fourth

week of January 1963. On arrival at these ports a large number of the

sacks in which the beans were packed were found to have been damaged

and the beans had spilled into the ship’s holds. Further shipment was

therefore suspended to permit adequate re-bagging of the remaining

beans. This was being undertaken by the donor country and 3,800 tons

was expected to be shipped in the third week of April 1963.

The distribution of the beans was carried out by the league of Red Cross

Societies, The Christian Committee for services in Algeria and the

Catholic Relief Services/NCWC on behalf of the Government.

6.4 Morocco

Morocco suffered heavily from the extensive floods of the Sebou River

system which occurred in the first week of January 1963. About 170,000

hectares of agricultural land was affected. Standing crops as well as

harvest crops stored in underground silos were destroyed and thousands

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of people were made homeless. The Government sought the assistance of

WFP and a staff member visited the country for consultation with the

Government. Immediate relief was provided to some extent by the

government out of food stocks available in unaffected parts of the

country. The Programme undertook to provide 33,000 tons of wheat.

This was to be used partly for distribution to needy flood victims and

partly for the replenishment of stocks issued by the Government and for

sowing the affected lands after the floods subsided. The first 7,200 tons,

which were being supplied by the Government of France, was expected

to reach Morocco in the second and third week of April, 1963.

The wheat was distributed by the Government of Morocco through the

Office of Cereals.

6.5 Tanganyika

In Tanganyika the government has been engaged in resettling about

12,000 refugees from Rwanda. Its resources, including assistance from

other countries being near exhaustion, requested WFP for assistance with

supplies of dried fish, beans and groundnuts for consumption by the

refugees for six months, and a small quantity of beans for sowing.

Fifty tons of dried cod fish supplied by Norway out of her pledge have

been shipped and were expected to reach Tanganyika in the second half

of April 1963.

In undertaking these operations to assist in the aforementioned

emergencies, the Executive Director had endeavoured to afford timely

assistance, complementing the assistance offered by the countries’ other

resources. With this objective in mind, close coordination with FAO was

maintained at headquarters. Coordination with the headquarters of other

88

interested agencies and governments was, however, not so readily

achieved owing to the distance involved.

It was in the country affected where the representatives of all interested

agencies and governments could come together that coordination could

be best achieved. The government of any country, in which an

emergency occurred, and which would need international assistance,

would therefore be advised to immediately set up a committee, including

the representatives of the governments and agencies concerned. Within

this committee, joint consultations on the assistance needed and the

possibilities of such assistance from individual governments and

agencies in relation to the situation in the country would be conducted.

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Chapter VII

Interviews

7.1 Interview with Mr. Ramiro Armando

de Oliveira Lopes da Silva,

WFP Deputy Executive Director for External Relations78

1. On the basis of assignments assumed by WFP and the

experiences lived in the field, what changes did you notice in

WFP’s “modus operandi”? Over the past decades, therefore,

what developments and changes did you observed in the way WFP

has intervened in emergency, rebuilding and development

operations?

When the World Food Programme was created, we were

fundamentally a development organisation and our

78 Mr. Ramiro Armando de Oliveira Lopes da Silva became Deputy Executive Director for External Relations of the World Food Programme in March 2010. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Lopes da Silva served as WFP’s Director of Emergencies and Deputy Chief Operating Office. Mr. Lopes da Silva began his career with the World Food Programme in 1985 as Food Aid Logistics Coordinator during the Great Horn of Africa and Sahel drought emergency. Since then, he has held senior management roles in operations in many countries, including Ethiopia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Angola and Sudan. He has held other senior positions in WFP including Director of Transport and Logistics from 1998 to 2002. During the period 2001-2002, he was also appointed as Special Envoy of the WFP Executive Director for the Afghanistan Crisis. In 2004, he was appointed Regional Director for the newly-established Bureau in Sudan, until 2006 when he returned to Rome as Director of the Transport and Procurement Division. In addition to his WFP responsibilities, Mr. Lopes da Silva was the UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from 2002 to 2004, subsequently becoming, in 2004, Senior Advisor to the United Nations Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. Prior to joining the UN World Food Programme, Mr. Lopes da Silva worked for the Mozambique Port and Railways (CFM) from 1975 to 1983. He started as a Port Equipment Maintenance Engineer and by 1978 Mr. Lopes da Silva was the Director General of the CFM-South with 17,000 workers reporting to him, managing a budget of over US$100 million. A Portuguese national, Mr. Lopes da Silva was born in Beira, Mozambique.

90

humanitarian/emergency portfolio was very small. We were first

exposed to an emergency situation in the 1970s, at the time of the

great famine. However, the event that started changing WFP was

the great famine in 1985, which covered the whole African horn:

Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and through Sudan: Chad,

Niger, Mali. That whole area of Africa, from coast-to-coast, was

subject to a major series of drought, which led to famine. At that

time, WFP was asked to respond to such disaster as a multilateral

instrument for food aid assistance. As a result, WFP suddenly

became an organisation with a very large emergency relief

portfolio. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were a series of

civil conflicts, and once again WFP was asked to be there in order

to change/provide relief assistance. On one hand, this change of

modus operandi in some of the countries we worked in had an

impact on our own profile, our own processes and procedures.

There were ongoing debates on the two elements. One was on the

value of food aid as a long-term development resource, making it

possible for WFP to use its resource food aid to impact on the

lives of poor people in a way that we could transform those lives.

There were issues related to the potential distortion of markets,

disincentives to agriculture in the countries where we operated. of

the second element was the weaknesses in a large number of

developing countries, particularly in Africa, which did not only

included weaknesses of governance as well as corruption. The

model that had been adopted for the development assistance in the

1980s was questioned. Is it worthwhile to work through the

national governments or is it better to work at community level?

Therefore, you have three factors for which we had no control

over, but influenced the way we operated. One, the expansion of

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our relief portfolio, two, the issue of food aid as a long term

development resource, and three, a change of the perspective on

how to engage with national governments on development and a

greater focus on communities. All these three factors impacted

WFP in the following manner: First, we started giving much more

attention to our relief intervention, our preparedness, the profile of

the staff, all the logistics which have created the outstanding

reputation of WFP today that did not exist in the late 1980s. All

these were skills that WFP had to create in order to be able to

respond to the new context. Secondly, from a policy perspective,

for our development portfolio, we indirectly engaged the member

states and abandoned the previous, large scale, food for work

programmes, which were mainly large public works schemes

owned by the governments of the countries where we operated.

We downsized by working directly with communities, changing

our focus from large infrastructure programmes to developing

assets along with the assets identified by the communities

themselves. Therefore, our real engagement was with the

communities at a local level.

If we fast forward to today, what is happening still has an impact

on the way we operate. WFP, I always say, is a journey. As we

continue on our journey, we keep adjusting to the context

accordingly. The period we are in now is on one hand of

recognition, that food surplus does not exist anymore, while it

existed at the time WFP was created. There is more and more

focus on how we can use cash resources, targeting food insecure

people, people who suffer from hunger in the countries where we

operate. Secondly, after a period of almost 20 years, the role of the

national governments in the developing countries has changed. So

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now everything is a country-led government ownership. Once

again during this transition, not only do we discuss the profile, but

also the substance of the programmes ensuring that the national

policies address the issues related with hunger, food insecurity,

malnutrition, targeting poor people. Throughout this process we

are introducing the new modalities from the Purchase for Progress

(P4P) to the cash vouchers, which is WFP readjusting to today’s

context. We know that the empirical evidence indicates the

number of natural disasters is growing and the impact of these

natural disasters is larger today than they were in the past, being

droughts in Africa or hurricanes in parts of Central America.

Therefore, our relief emergency portfolio continues to grow, and

at the same time we adjust the process to the new context of

development assistance. So the enormous challenge for WFP is to

be able to keep a balance between these two pillars.

2. Internally at WFP, what developments and changes from a

political point of view can you identify in the past 20 years?

I mentioned before that the transition from our long-term

development perspective to where we are today is mainly

summarized in a very important policy document, which was

approved by our Executive Board in 1999.

In this document we say food aid can be used in ways that create

opportunities for poor, hungry people to have access to long-term

development. Therefore, all our focus on the social agenda, school

feeding, maternal and child health and nutrition, asset creation at

community level, aims at creating opportunities for the hungry,

poor people to have access to long-term development. This

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demonstrated that the debate was an internal debate impacting the

way we accomplish our operations .

Additionally, I believe that over time, looking at how WFP’s

profile changed in the last 25 years, in terms of staff composition,

we have many more colleagues today from the countries where we

have programmes than when I joined WFP, which was mainly

staffed by Americans, Canadians, Europeans and North Africans,

and very few other nationalities.

How WFP adjusted to these different contexts including this staff

composition, is a reflection of how politics impacted internally on

us. In the arena of relief emergency, we operate in what we call

complex environments in, for example, Somalia or Pakistan or

Afghanistan, where not only do we have issues of hunger,

malnutrition, natural disasters, droughts in Somalia and

Afghanistan, but we also have a very difficult context of conflict.

Therefore, you prepare staff not only to look at issues from a

technical and technocratic viewpoint, but you train the staff to be

able to negotiate with different groups, fighting for power,

remaining impartial/neutral, independent, how you negotiate

access to beneficiaries, all being new attributes that WFP did not

own when I joined the organisation over 20 years ago. It is all

things that we have developed over time to respond to the context

where we operate, not only the broad international context but the

specific operational context. Within each country, one needs to

develop the skills, understand the local communities and the

dynamics, and what the different groups think. Then, to engage in

the negotiations, you have to have access and to maintain your

space. Keeping in mind that you should engage in a way that you

maintain your independence, your neutrality, your impartiality.

94

3. Throughout your work and life experiences, what has been the

most notable experience? What stands out for you?

I have had 25 fantastic years with WFP. I have enjoyed all of my

assignments, less so the ones in headquarters, because I have

always been a field person. But I think that the assignment that

impacted me the most was my recent assignment in Haiti, January

this year. Even though after 9/11, I was deployed to Afghanistan

as the WFP special envoy, travelling from Afghanistan to Iraq

before the invasion and staying there until after the invasion. Then

I moved from Iraq to Darfur, followed by Rwanda at the time of

the genocide and the movement of the Hutus to Eastern Congo.

The Executive Director had asked me to go to Haiti. I went 10

days after the earthquake and stayed for about 6 weeks. Haiti, Port

au Prince impressed me, because it was the first time the

humanitarian community, not only WFP, was responding to a

natural disaster in a very large urban centre. An urban centre that

had already a very fragile, or non-existing structure. An urban

centre that already had very visible, political, and social tensions,

in a country that is characterised by what I call fragmented

politics. Haiti is not a country where you have two or three big

parties that manage the political process. Therefore, in this

instance, the humanitarian community managed to change their

response because 1. Humanitarians had also, for the first time,

been victims of a natural disaster. Therefore, all the big capacities,

such as UN peacekeeping, lost the leadership. In addition,

agencies had colleagues killed as a result of the earthquake. We

lost all our offices, our vehicles, our assets. 2. We were confronted

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with a totally new context, consequently, being one of my most

challenging assignments.

4. Unfortunately scandals and corruption are on today’s agenda.

Some of these have involved WFP. How would you respond to

resolve these issues?

WFP is an organisation that deals with food. Firstly, food is a very

large, voluminous, cumbersome resource, which implies long

supply chains, and a lot of contracting between the point of origin

and the final destination at the distribution site. Therefore, the

possibility of corruption, diversions, and misuse along that supply

chain is something that we have always had. Furthermore, the

systems we have put in place mitigate that risk. However, food

has another characteristic, it is easy to market. If you hand out

mosquito pills it is not essentially a resource that is attractive and

that one can sell on the local market. However, you can sell your

wheat, maize, beans, sugar, and salt in the local market. Therefore,

is it not only the risk of diversion and corruption along the supply

chain, but also the same risks at the level of distribution. We have

over time developed systems to try and reduce or mitigate those

risks and we have a very strong policy of zero tolerance when this

happens, including when those diversions are undertaken by

personnel of the national governments in the countries concerned.

We have countries reimbursing us for commodities that were

misused or misappropriated. In today’s context there is an

additional issue in which I made a real reference to the complex

environments, where our ability to monitor is reduced because of

concerns related with staff security. For instance, in Somalia,

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contrary to what we do in Sudan, we cannot have the WFP staff at

each distribution site at the moment each distribution takes place.

Our risk, therefore, of having corruption is higher in Somalia then

it is in Kenya.

How we address those challenges is very important and I think we

have the right approach. We have developed the strategies and the

modalities to do so, by triangulating information, engaging the

local communities, creating hotlines to allow the local

communities to provide us with feedback when they think that

something is not being done, and by engaging other partners in

providing that feedback to us on what is happening within our

distribution sites. The reputation risks are great when we operate

in those contexts, so what we need is to be very open when we

engage with our member states explaining what is the context,

what are the mitigation strategies we are putting in place and what

is the residual risk that is always going to be there. Then it is

decided if it is worthwhile to save the lives of Somali children. Is

it worthwhile to take this residual risk? We need to be very open

and very transparent with our member states so we do not raise

expectations that the world is perfect when unfortunately it is not.

5. The donors and financiers of these WFP operations are the same

people who leave these developing countries with unresolved

public debts. Does this look like a contradiction? What is your

opinion regarding this?

That is a tough question and I think it is true. But I also think

when the member states support WFP, they support us because

our direct impact with the communities where we work. When

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they provide the more traditional long-term development

assistance, which is generated through infrastructure development,

then the recipient country will not be able to pay it back. Their

approach is more a technocratic approach confirming that it is true

that there is a contradiction. On the one hand, what these countries

need to do is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. On

the other hand, there are all the issues related with the social

protection and the opportunities for the poor, food insecure

communities. In the end it is the same level of contradiction that

you have in the rich countries themselves. Why do you have social

protection programmes in all the European countries or the United

States? The food stamp programme in the United States is

probably the biggest food aid programme in the world. In the end,

it is this quote unquote ‘contradiction’. On one side, the hard

business looks at the issues and addresses them as such. On the

other side, taking into account that there are social impacts, there

are social imbalances. The world is not fair and the wealth is not

distributed in an even manner, therefore, you have the need to

manage those social protection issues. And, in a way through us,

particularly on school feeding and on mother and child health, you

are investing in the next generation of the countries where we

work. Therefore, it is indeed in a way a contradiction, but it is

almost a natural contradiction.

6. "To eliminate extreme poverty and hunger: to be halved between

1990 and 2015, the percentage of people who live on less than one

dollar a day. To be halved, between 1990 and 2015, the

percentage of people who suffer from hunger". This is the first

MDG objective (SO1). Today the number of hungry people has

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increased and the response from the international community does

not seem to be sufficient and effective. What are your thoughts

regarding this? How is WFP positioned in this framework?

There are always two ways to look at the glass of water, it is half

empty or it is half full. Now the way I look at it, it is half full.

Unfortunately, it is true that in absolute numbers, the number of

hungry people in the world has increased. In 2007, FAO

estimated, in absolute numbers, at under 70 million and then in

2009 just over 1 billion . On one side we need to be aware that

there has been some progress. In absolute numbers the challenge

we have today is much bigger than the challenge we had in the

past. Now, I believe that the 2008 high food prices called the

attention of the world to this situation and of the political

leadership at a global level. Then, for the first time you hear heads

of state, heads of governments who talk about issues of food

security and nutrition. They never spoke about those issues 10

years ago. Suddenly, however, they realised that at first they had

not focussed on a very crucial issue, which I think is if you do not

address hunger you forget about the other MDGs. So if you do not

succeed in hunger, even if you are making progress, it is a fragile

kind of progress. The moment you stop making investments, they

are not sustainable because there is hunger and everything falls

behind, health, nutrition, and so on. Suddenly they realise that

they are not addressing the core issues of food insecurity and of

hunger. Food insecurity would then impact on the stability of the

world. As politicians they then refocus on these issues. Therefore,

like the pendulum, it is in one position and then suddenly they

realise there is a problem, the pendulum is then released and they

99

move into totally different positions. There is a lot of focus now

on food security and fortunately, it is still being looked at as an

issue of making food available. Therefore, increasing the supply

side, by investing largely in agriculture, is fundamental. The issue

that we are calling on the attention of the world, is we know a lot

of hungry poor in the countries with surplus. So if you want to

address food security, food insecurity and hunger, you need to

tackle the supply side, but you need to make sure that the hungry

poor have access to the food available. We are therefore pushing

for a comprehensive approach that has to tackle the social

protection issues, which creates the safety net. The potential for

increased production in the world is basically with the small

farmers in the developing world. These small farmers are poor

people who live on less than a dollar a day. If you are poor and

you are asked to make investments to increase your productivity

and your production you are very careful, you are very cautious in

the way you do that because you know, if you fail by

experimenting on a new seed, by experimenting on a new

agriculture technique, you are going to lose all your assets. You

lose all your assets, you lose your land, you lose your goat, your

cow and you are totally impoverished. If you want to get the small

farmers engaged, you need to ensure that you are creating the

safety net that guarantees them that if it fails an environment has

been created that support them to take the risk and this is why we

insist so much. P4P is a good example, because we are telling the

small farmers you can take the risk with WFP to buy your food or

to assist you if you go through a bad year. This is why we are

engaging with the African Union. We tested the weather insurance

system in Ethiopia and it was successful. Now we are engaging in

100

discussions with the African Union as to why the African

countries do not create a regional weather insurance scheme,

which allows countries to call upon the insurance when they are

confronted with a drought and then would need to compensate

their farmers because their farmers lost their harvest and as a

result have nothing. Therefore, we are insisting very much on the

issues of access to social protection and on the issues related with

the future. Not only do we have food available but we have food

quality which makes a huge difference. This is how we are

engaging in the present debate by encouraging investments on the

supply side, increasing agriculture production and at the same

time we are saying, let’s be sure we have the safety net and the

social protection in place. On one side, supporting the investment

of the small farmer, and on the other side, to ensure that the next

generation is better nurtured, better educated so they can take the

next step.

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7.2 Interview with Mr. Amir Mahmoud Abdulla, WFP Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating

Officer79

1. On the basis of assignments undertaken by WFP and the

experiences that you personally lived in the field, what changes

have you noticed in WFP’s “modus operandi”?

One of the key things that have happened over the years in WFP,

is that we have been transformed from a fairly small food surplus

agency that was dealing only with development issues or focusing

mainly on development. One has to go right back to the 1960s to

see that focus which was mainly on development and using that

food surplus in programmes that were very small in scale and not

necessarily integrated into a larger picture within the general

development of the country, which we were working with. Over

those 50 years, as we have transformed, there has been some very

significant changes, the most significant of course came in the late

1970s, early 1980s which was when WFP really started to emerge

as an emergency focused organization culminating towards the

end of the 1980s. At this point we had shifted from being 95%

79 Amir Mahmoud Abdulla became Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Food Programme in March 2009. Before assuming his current post, Mr. Abdulla was WFP’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) from January 2008. Mr. Abdulla’s career at WFP began as a logistics officer in 1991. He then went on to serve in a variety of field and headquarters posts including as Project Manager (2000-2001) responsible for implementing the corporate information management system, and as Director of Budget (2001-2004). In 2004, Mr. Abdulla was named Regional Director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe Bureau where he served until July 2006, at which point he took up the post of Regional Director for Southern Africa until his return to headquarters in 2008. Prior to joining WFP, he was a Branch Manager for Juba and Port Sudan for shipping and forwarding company Transintra, and Assistant Area Manager for engineering company, Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor, in the Sudan. Mr. Abdulla also taught at the American School & Comboni College in Khartoum. A Sudanese national, Mr. Abdulla was born in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1957. He is a graduate of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University, reading Electrical Engineering and graduating in June 1978 with a BSc Honours degree and ACGI Associateship of The City & Guilds of London Institute.

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development, 5% emergency to be by the late 1980s, early 1990s

up to 60% -70% emergency. By the early 1990s we were getting

up to 80% and eventually even 90% focused on emergency and

really only about 10% on development. This was a huge

transformation, which I think really did catapult WFP into a

position as a premier humanitarian organization dealing in some

of the most difficult emergencies around the world. In places that

were affected by conflict, affected by weather - climate patterns,

affected by economic shocks, affected by disasters like natural

disasters, floods and earthquakes and so forth. Perhaps during that

time, the shift in focus in some of the countries in which we

worked also changed. Another thing, WFP at its birth was born as

a programme that was designed to fall under the UNDP and FAO.

When it was first set up it was almost like an experiment to see

how it would be and now it has grown into an organization, an

agency within its own right. This transformation has included

along the way things like WFP’s Country Directors becoming

representatives of WFP within the country that they work. With

that identity, even with the huge shift towards emergency, we still

have the identity emerging, which allowed us to integrate our

programmes much more with an international interest. These are

some of the main transformations. If these were mega

transformations, I think what we have seen in the last few years is

another transformation that focused more on food surpluses,

which are not really a luxury that the countries have as much of

today. Even if there are food excesses in parts of the world and

food shortages in others, WFP still tries to work towards moving

food in places where it is in excess to others. However, it is just

not accomplished through the old style surplus donation of food, it

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now involves commercial activities. Most of our donors now

contribute cash, and we use that cash either to buy food and move

it when there is a food shortage in countries or we are now trying

to do more and more cash and voucher programmes, putting

income transfer in the hands of those we serve so that they can

buy locally and help to stimulate markets. This is another

transformation that is under way at the moment and with that

comes the possibility not to necessarily shift the focus of attention

away from emergency. I still believe that WFP has a major role to

play in that area, but allows us to play a better role perhaps in

development and allows us to have a more focused and

appropriate development programme to take part in the country’s

own priorities, and maybe see a rekindling of WFP’s role in

development. We have very different tools to put on the table and

through these cash interventions there is a much higher degree and

focus on nutrition and nutritional products, rather than just the

classic food emergency distributions used to focus on getting basic

foods, such as maize, beans, oil, salt, to people in the fight for

hunger. Now we are trying to ensure that we also fight

malnutrition and deal with the nutritional aspects focusing on

ensuring that children get the right food that they need and

nutritional content. So in as much as we made the shift into the

emergency and humanitarian, there is another shift going on at the

moment and we are in the middle of that.

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2. Over the past decades, what evolutions and transformations

have been noted in the way WFP has intervened in emergency,

rebuilding and development operations?

WFP has focused very much on the lifesaving and protecting of

livelihoods in emergencies. There are times where if people do not

get food they will die, so that is lifesaving, and there are other

times where if they do not get food, they will have no option but

to go to what we call coping mechanisms, which are extreme and

basically reduce their status of being able to sustain future shocks.

For example, maybe a house has one chicken and they sell the

chicken. Maybe if they have a cow or a goat, they sell that. Or

maybe they have to rent their land or they have to sell what few

small goods they have, which means that people just become

poorer. We categorize this as livelihood protection. Therefore, we

give food so that they do not do things that would put them in a

position where they would become poorer and more vulnerable.

Certainly in the early 1990s, WFP passed through a policy or

strategy paper, which switched from crisis to recovery. In this

paper, we really did outline the need to look at recovery aspects as

early as possible in a relief crisis. I saw this myself when I worked

in Angola in 1995. We were working with displaced persons,

people who had to leave their homes because of the civil war and

among these people, mainly women had small family plots that

they normally had in their villages where they would grow

cassava, which was their main staple. What we knew from surveys

was that they were returning to the areas they were from, in this

case, to the town of Malange. Because they had left their villages

and their fields for many years, the cassava plants had all died and

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there would be nothing for them when they went back. So we

were doing a feeding programme in Malange, but with one group

of women we had a food for work programme where these women

were actually growing cassava. The idea was that they grew the

cassava, a green leaf vegetable, where they would also use the

cuttings. The main object of this project was that when they went

back to their own fields, those cuttings would be used to grow the

next crops of cassava. It was like an emergency feeding

programme for the displaced women. But it had a longer term

objective. When they went back home, they were able to start

planting and feeding their family with an iron and vitamin

enriched food. This is just one illustration or example of the way

in which WFP has focused on noting that in its emergency and

relief programmes, the key objective is to save the lives or protect

livelihoods. At the same time these things are not exclusive. You

do not have to do it with a different programme so long as you

have the right focus or right additional input in. In the

aforementioned case, we needed to have some agricultural tools

and we needed agricultural assistance from FAO to make sure

they were growing the right types. As long as you have those

small additional inputs you are able take a programme that was

providing the food for life and using it on the food for the future.

3. Internally at WFP, what developments and changes from a

political point of view have characterized the past 20 years?

I think that this major shift in the last 20 years, we have been

focusing very much on emergency and relief including the

additions that I have just mentioned with the more recent changes.

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I think that the donor communities’ view of WFP is very clear in

that they wish us to remain very much a nimble, emergency

focused organization. That in itself has been a great strength,

because we have been well funded as an emergency organization.

It has caused certain stresses at times because often the countries

in which we work want us to do more than just emergency so that

has been a difficulty. But I think probably the biggest

transformation for WFP over the last 20 years has been an internal

one, which has seen WFP move from a very centralized

organization. It was roughly 20 years ago in which WFP was just

really emerging with its own real independence and identity. It

was the point at which our Country Directors were becoming

representatives and getting more integrated into programmes

locally. But, it was also a period through which we went through a

decentralization of the organization. We put our Regional Bureaus

and Regional Directors in the field, and we brought decision

getting closer to the operations. We placed accountability closer to

the operations and today we have far more senior and experienced

managers in the field than we had before. And, there are far more

experienced and senior managers at headquarters with field

experience. So I think this has been one of our aims to have a very

mobile workforce both at headquarters and in the field,

understanding both views. That is probably been one of the

biggest transformations over that period.

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4. Throughout your work and life experiences, what has been the

most noted experience? What stands out for you?

I think that probably working with WFP is at times a pain and at

other times a privilege. It is a pain when you go out and see some

of the things that we see but it is a privilege to be able to do

something and help. So picking one instance is difficult, but

certainly I think some of the work that we did in Angola, when I

was a logistics officer, and we were working on roads and bridges

and just watching the way in which life came back to the little

villages and markets in the areas that we were working, was really

quite remarkable. We were doing it primarily to move our food

transport and to see the way in which life developed around the

roads that we had built was very rewarding. I think that often

when we managed to get food convoys through very, very difficult

places, has always been very rewarding. Taking part in some of

our early air drops was again very exciting. However, I think

managing to go and see the transformation that the presence of

WFP can offer is incredible. For example, I was in one area where

children had been dying in a medical centre then, once food

started arriving, within a few weeks/months you would have

children singing and joining in little nursery games during the

feeding. Therefore, seeing changes like that is always very

rewarding. I have had a couple of very rewarding experiences and

I think WFP, in addition to all of its field focus and humanitarian

and emergency focus, is also a leader within the UN system in

terms of its IT and finance systems and I have been very involved

with the bringing in of SAP, which is a standard software product.

We are one of the primary users of that within the UN system. We

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are an early adopter of IPSAS, which is an accounting standard

that I was involved in at the time as well. Therefore, to have this

role that we are on the cutting edge of humanitarian things, and at

the same time still a leader also in accountability issues in the

United Nations, I think are some of the really rewarding things of

working in an organization like WFP.

I did not go to Haiti but I ran the taskforce from this end.

I think the most recent emergency that I visited three times within

a six week period, was the flooding in Pakistan. The flood in

Pakistan was, as our own Executive Director has pointed out, one

that many people will remember and talk about like the tsunami of

a few years ago. When you look at what happened in Pakistan

versus the tsunami the difference was that it happened slowly and

not as many people, fortunately, were killed, because people were

able to move. However, the damage of the water is still apparent

and there are still parts of Pakistan that are flooded today.

Then I think about a much smaller operation in Kyrgyzstan when

the fighting was going on around Osh and I went up into the areas

near Uzbekistan. WFP was one of the first agencies to go to

people after they had been locked in their homes. Again for the

people it was not so much that we were bringing food, it was the

fact that we were there. So often, it is things like that, that you

have memories of.

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5. Unfortunately scandals and corruption are on today’s agenda.

Some of these have involved WFP. How would you respond to

resolve these issues?

I think the first point that I have to make very clear is that the one

thing we do not tolerate within WFP is fraud or corruption

involving our own staff. If that is found, it is dealt with most

severely and I unfortunately am in a position where I have to sign

the memos that advise staff that their contracts are terminated when

this happens. Unfortunately, I find it sad when this happens, not

unfortunate that we take the action. So, we do take the action most

severely. I think unfortunately, that often because of the difficult

places in which we work, things go on around us that we sometimes

have no control over. There are things that happen in some of the

most difficult and dangerous places in the world that we have no

control over but sometimes we have to live with that to be able to

deliver the food to the people whose lives we need to save. So the

answer to that is sometimes we have to go places and accept the

things happening that we have no control over if we want to reach

the people like we do. What we do have control over is the

behaviour, ethics and attitude of our own staff. Let me be very

clear, if anything happens that involves any of our own staff at any

level, from the most junior to the most senior, serious action is

always taken and sometimes some of these are very sad. I have seen

that we have dismissed drivers who have stolen fuel that was not

worth more than $50, but we have a zero tolerance policy and zero

tolerance means zero tolerance.

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6. The donors and financiers of these WFP operations, are they the

same people who leave these developing countries with unresolved

public debts. Does this not seem a contradiction? What is your

opinion regarding this?

One of the challenges we face at WFP is that we have very

generous donors, but one of the difficulties we face is that donors

are very generous but often donors themselves do not necessarily

realize the pressures that they put on countries because donor

contributions and the way donors work are also fragmented. For

example, the part of the government of a donor country that

contributes towards emergency and humanitarian relief is not

necessarily the same one that is dealing with loans and debts within

a country. I think this is now being recognized more by donor

countries and that is why we have the Paris declaration, the Accra

code and the Rome principles so that contributions to a country are

placed more in the hands of the government of that country to see

its own priorities and fix its own debt problems. Therefore, I think

that the whole infrastructure of providing aid and debt relief is

improving and certainly Italy for instance did a debt relief swap

with Egypt where they cancelled Egypt’s debt as long as Egypt

contributed to the food programme for WFP in Egypt. Indeed, the

WFP food programmes in Egypt were funded greatly by the Italian

government relief of debt to Egypt. So this is a good example of

how countries can recognize if they find a way to relieve their debt

by making it a part of developing aid which is a good thing. I think

debt relief is a good tool as long as when relieving that debt, the

country, which is being relieved, accepts that they have to make

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more of an input into human development within their own

countries and the Egypt-Italy-WFP was a very good example.

7. “To eliminate extreme poverty and hunger: to be halved between

1990 and 2015, the percentage of people who live on less than one

dollar a day. To be halved, between 1990 and 2015, the percentage

of people who suffer from hunger”. This is the first MDG objective

(SO1). Today the number of hungry people has increased and the

response from the international community does not seem to be

sufficient and effective. What are your thoughts regarding this?

How does WFP introduce itself in this picture?

WFP’s work is obviously critical in working on that 1st MDG.

Unfortunately we are arriving at a time of financial and economic

crisis across the developed world where funds are not so available. I

think what we have to keep in mind, also donor countries have to

keep in mind, that the amount of money that was needed to solve

some of the financial crisis that happened, compared with what is

needed to actually do something about hunger, is minimal. I think

that in the long term people have to realize that not solving the

poverty and hunger around the world is in the long term going to

cost more than solving it. And that is a move WFP is working on

with other agencies to try and bring the so-called cost of hunger to

the table so that people can recognize that it is a good investment to

deal with it. Unfortunately, we are going through difficult times and

these are not easy issues to manage or discuss. But, on the bright

side, I think elements of the private sector have realized that it is

good business to try and end poverty because as people become

wealthy, they actually use their wealth and keep companies going.

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So private sector is now involved. But we will only deal with this

when the developed and developing worlds, private sector, agencies

such as WFP all get involved. The most encouraging thing I think is

that the youth of today, the generation that are leaving universities

today, have a far stronger conviction that it is unacceptable to

continue like this. I think that the youth of today recognize that if

we do not do something about this now, they are the people who

still have 50/60 /70 years ahead of them, whereas people like

myself, we are reaching the end of our careers and not many years

left to go, even if in our lives we have tried and have sort of become

perhaps reconciled to the fact that it is too difficult to tackle. But

my greatest belief is that the youth of today are engaged and that

they will find a solution.

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7.3 Interview with Mrs. Ilaria Dettori, Chief School Feeding Programme Design and Support Division

1. In your capacity as the Director of the School Feeding

Programme, how do you believe that the School Feeding

Programme makes a difference?

School feeding programmes provide a variety of mutually

reinforcing benefits. Very few programmes have indeed so many

benefits in so many areas. They are an incentive for parents to

send children to school and keep them there. Children that have

eaten nutritious food learn more at school and perform better,

particularly when school feeding programmes are associated with

deworming treatments. Children are healthier and do not miss as

many school days because they are sick. Enrolment increases,

drop out reduces and attendance and pass rates improve.

Children progress further and better through education and a

higher number of children successfully complete their primary

education at the right age and are adequately prepared for

secondary school.

Properly designed school feeding programmes have an even

stronger multiplier effect in countries with high rates of

HIV/AIDS. In these countries, higher access to education means

that the young men and women of the future are much more

likely to adopt responsible behaviours. In countries with high

rates of early pregnancies, benefits are also multiplied. By

keeping young girls at school for longer, they will have children

a bit later in life and they will be more educated. It is proven that

more educated and mature mothers are much more capable in

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taking proper care of their babies and to apply good nutrition

practices in the first two years of their life, which are critical for

long term cognitive capacity.

Take-home rations are monthly food rations that cover the family

requirements and are given to children that are particularly

marginalised from education (often girls) as an incentive for

families to send them to school. In countries where the enrolment

of girls is particularly low, this can have a dramatic impact on

their access to education, which also has an inter-generational

impact, as it is also proven that children (boys and girls) of better

educated mothers are much more likely to stay and succeed in

education. Take-home rations targeting vulnerable, food insecure

families also represent an income transfer to avoid that children

are withdrawn from school and are sent to work, as a

contribution to the family income.

In times of crisis, school feeding is a powerful safety net that

prevents children from missing education because of droughts,

floods, earthquakes, and wars. By encouraging families in

sending their children to school, school feeding contributes to re-

establishing normality and a safe, child-friendly environment in

the midst or in the aftermath of emergencies.

Nutritious meals provided at school are also essential to ensure

the required micronutrient intake for children, who are still

developing their physical and cognitive capacity. In many

countries where we work, even when some food is provided at

home, school feeding represents the main source of essential

vitamins and minerals.

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When food distributed at school is produced and procured

locally, it also represents an incentive for small farmholders.

Good school feeding programmes are included in broader

packages of school-based interventions to improve children’s

health, like systematic deworming, provision of safe water and

sanitation facilities, fuel-efficient stoves programmes, malaria

prevention, psychosocial support and so on. When properly

integrated with other programmes, school feeding contributes to

developing schools as a platform for community development.

2. The School Feeding Programmes or similar have been also

implemented by other NGOs or Organisations. How is WFP

different?

Every organisation is different and every organisation is needed.

There are 66 million school-age children in the world that go to

school hungry. An additional 72 million school-age children are

not at all in school. WFP's vision is a world where hunger is no

longer an obstacle to children’s human development. To make this

vision a reality, global efforts and partnerships are needed to

support national governments in increasing the coverage, quality

and sustainability of school feeding programmes.

WFP's comparative advantage lies first of all in our very extensive

experience in school feeding. We reach about 22 million children

around the world and we have been implementing school feeding

programmes for 45 years. From this experience we have learned

many lessons on what approaches work better than others. WFP

also has an extremely deep field presence, which places the

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organisation in a very good position to be that link between NGO

programmes, at the community level, and government work at a

central level. Other organisations have different types of

comparative advantages. For example, NGOs implement food

assistance projects but also work in other sectors. They are firmly

rooted in community work and can provide a precious

contribution to integrate school feeding programmes with

complementary, community-based interventions that create

mutually reinforcing benefits. They are also well placed to

conduct capacity development with local administrations. Other

UN agencies, like UNICEF, can help the integration of school

feeding into education and nutrition policies. They also have, like

the World Bank, a stronger capacity in policy dialogue with

central governments. Ultimately, all these capacities are needed

and required, and we will succeed only if we manage to integrate

our comparative strengths.

3. With respect to the actual policy brought forward by WFP in

school feeding projects, what type of developments and changes

did you notice in the past few years? Therefore, which changes

can you point out in WFP's 'modus operandi' concerning school

feeding?

First of all, the new policy has resulted from a review of our

experience in school feeding over the last 45 years. Good practices

have been identified and have been adopted as 'quality standards'

that every school feeding progamme should meet. Therefore,

among what we have done we select what works and we make it

an explicit policy. The eight standards of quality are:

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1. The presence of a strategy for sustainability

2. Sound alignment with national policy frameworks

3. Stable funding and budgeting

4. Needs-based, cost-effective quality programme design

5. Strong institutional arrangements for implementation,

monitoring and accountability

6. Strategies for local production and sourcing

7. Strong partnership and inter-sector coordination

8. Strong community participation and ownership

One other new thing is that the policy recognises school feeding as

a powerful safety net with multiple benefits. Until a few years ago,

school feeding in WFP used to be called 'Food for Education',

underlying that the main benefits were an educational outcome.

We have now explicitly broadened the scope of the potential

benefits of school feeding to also include nutrition, gender, value

transfer and community development outcomes.

Finally, the new policy stresses the role of Government ownership

and transition from the start. Even in situations where WFP

implements its projects directly and even in situations where there

is not a national school feeding programme managed and

implemented by the national government, we try to work from the

start on a strategy for long-term sustainability. Essentially, in

dialogue with the government, we ask, where do you

(government) wish to be in 5, or 10, or 20 years time in terms of

school feeding? What should a national school feeding programme

look like? And what work needs to be done to get there? And then

we try and design and implement programmes that, alongside

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building national capacity, are compatible and conducive to that

long term strategy.

4. In the transitional process why is the government's role

fundamental? What type of difficulty is faced in building a

relationship with them?

Ultimately, national governments need to own, manage,

implement, and fund their own school feeding programmes.

Engaging with the government at early stages ensures that school

feeding programmes are consistent and coherent with national

development policies and strategies, with education sector plans

and nutrition strategies, and with social protection frameworks.

Depending on the context, different modalities may be more or

less appropriate. Modalities include a cooked meal in schools,

biscuits or snacks multi-fortified with vitamins and minerals, take-

home rations or a combination of some of the above. The most

appropriate modality depends on many factors, including the

duration of the school day, the specific objectives of school

feeding in each country, the capacity to procure and process food

locally and to some extent, the security situation, the availability

of food at home, the level of micronutrient deficiencies in country

among school age children, and many other factors that are

context specific.

For successful transitions, school feeding needs to be embedded in

national policies and in the country's legislative framework. There

needs to be clear structures responsible for the oversight,

implementation and monitoring of the programme. For stable

funding, an essential precondition is the inclusion of school

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feeding in national budgets with a dedicated budget line. The

division of responsibility between central and local levels also

needs to be clear and functional and the capacity of the respective

governments' bodies needs to be in place. Finally, there needs to

be a strong institutional capacity and clear mechanisms and

responsibilities for food procurement, logistics, monitoring and

quality control. Schools also need to be properly equipped and the

role of school staff, communities, parents and teacher’s

associations and local authorities should also be clear.

These systems are not designed or established overnight, and

require years of work to understand the specific role that school

feeding can play within the country's development agenda, the

most appropriate model, and the most appropriate mechanisms.

Establishing policies, laws, strategies require time and internal

buy-in. Defining budget lines and developing internal institutional

and operational capacity also requires time. The earlier a

government is, not only engaged, but in the lead of this process,

the smoother, more effective and faster the transition.

5. With respect to your predecessors, which objectives are

implemented in managing the department?

When I joined the school feeding unit shortly before the approval

of the new policy, my main task was to understand and provide

guidance to country offices on how to translate this policy into

practice. For example, a specific nutrition outcome is a new thing

for WFP. School feeding can reduce micronutrient deficiencies

among school age children, but to do so the food ration needs to

provide a very high level of micronutrients (vitamins and

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minerals), which is not always the case in our programmes. How

to increase micronutrient content (and therefore enhance the

impact of the programme) while maintaining sustainability is not

as easy as it may seem: many countries do not have the local

capacity to produce and process multi-fortified food and to enrich

normal food, with additional vitamins and minerals. Food

imported from outside is more expensive and makes for a less

sustainable programme. Ultimately, for sustainable school feeding

as much food as possible should be produced and/or processed

within the national borders of the country. Developing modalities

to fully reconcile these different aspects will take more research,

experience, and eventually time.

Another example is the capacity development work with national

governments: WFP is traditionally a very operational agency, the

first one in the field after an emergency and the one with the

deepest field presence. Other organisations are instead stronger on

policy dialogue with national governments, which requires

institutional capacity and resources. The question is: how do we

improve our capacity to engage in strategic policy discussions

with national governments while maintaining our operational

strength? To what extent do we need to build our internal capacity

and how much can we just improve our coordination and

cooperation with other organisations like the World Bank or

UNICEF?

These are all practical issues that we are now facing in the

application at field level concerning the new approach. My core

function is to ensure that WFP Country Offices have the technical

support required to design, implement, and monitor sound and

effective programmes. We do that by developing Programme

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Guidance (manuals and guidelines that are accessible to all WFP

staff), by providing ad-hoc technical support to Country Offices

(COs) on specific issues, and by implementing field missions. We

basically develop and provide the 'how to' of the global strategy.

6. Which are the major difficulties that are met in bringing to an

end a school feeding project?

The objective is not for school feeding programmes to end but to

transition them into national programmes. Every country in the

world has a mechanism - or wishes to establish a mechanism - to

provide food in school to school children. In the wealthier

countries in Europe or North America, where parents can afford it,

school fees may include the cost of the school lunch, and parents

may provide children with a mid-morning snack that they bring

from home. Even in many western countries, school lunches are

often subsidised, at least for children coming from lower-income

families. In poorer countries the state contribution needs to be

higher, and the parents and community contribution may be

provided in different ways, for example by either providing

firewood for the school kitchen or contributing to cooking and to

the management of the programme. Paradoxically, those countries

with lower education indicators, low nutrition indicators and

higher levels of poverty, where school feeding is most needed, are

those with a lower coverage.

That is why we do not talk anymore about 'exit strategies' which

could give the idea of a project that begins and ends, we talk less

about 'handover', which signals a moment in time when the

programmes changed hands from WFP to national governments.

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'Transition' indicates a process where responsibility is gradually

transferred from WFP to the Government, to ensure that sufficient

capacity is in place to ensure quality and sustainability of the

programme after WFP's departure.

The main difficulties are related to a Government's budget,

because these countries have stretched budgets. School feeding is

a long term investment, that eventually produces significant

benefits also in terms of Government resources: more educated

and healthier children will become more productive adults, with a

healthier life, that are going to rely less on government social

support and are better able to support others in a more

disadvantaged position. However, in the short term, it represents a

cost, and with stretched resources it is difficult to allocate them.

That is why, as a part of what we are doing, we also place a lot of

emphasis and work on the design of programmes that are

affordable - an affordable investment. After all, children may

represent 20% of today's population, but they are 100% of our

future.

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7.4 Interview with Mr. Carlo Scaramella, El Salvador’s ex-

Country Director

1. In one’s capacity as El Salvador’s ex-Country Director, how

would you explain the outcome of the school feeding handover

process in El Salvador? Why?

If you look at our experience in El Salvador, there are different

factors that contributed to the successful handover. 1. We have

reached a level of development of the programme that had already

achieved ownership by the government and the state of El

Salvador. The handover had reached its final phase and we only

had to finalise a process that had already been ongoing for some

time. 2. There was a great sense of ownership by the government

than by the state and recognition of the strategic input and school

feeding programme for the state as a programme for social

promotion of national unity, and of integration of social support.

This meant that globally within the country there was a strong sort

of understanding that this was in general terms one of the most

important social support activities of the country, and it made

sense for the country to take full ownership of it. 3. There were

resources available for the country to do that, in the sense that El

Salvador had reached a level of budgetary self sustainability that

allowed the country to take over, to become independent in terms

of funding its own school feeding activities.

Therefore, the concurrence of the three factors: natural, ownership

resources, as well as the actual development of the programme as

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a national programme is already for large part managed by

national entities that allowed this to happen in a smoother manner.

2. What are the “lessons learned” that came out during your

mandate in relation to the transitional process carried out in El

Salvador?

Most important lesson is that, we as WFP need to be able to

recognise strategically when to phase out and when, in fact, there

is a readiness on the other side to take over. We need to support

these processes of taking over on the side of the government and

reposition the role of WFP as a quality control and advisory

organisation in relation to the implementation of the programme,

rather than as an implementer. So, the main lesson is that, we as

WFP need to be able to understand that there may be opportunities

for us to phase out, from the operational side to building national

ownership, and when we recognise those opportunities, we need

to be fast in taking them on and pushing these processes forward.

3. What would you say were the greatest difficulties that you

encountered during your mandate in El Salvador?

In general, I think perhaps the most complex thing was to try to

reposition and re-profile the role of WFP, not being just an

organisation that provides and delivers food aid, but also as an

organisation that intervenes and interfaces with governments and

other actors at a policy level, at a strategic level, and so on. I think

the most challenging aspect was exactly to lift/elevate the level

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and profile of WFP in the public domain and build a different

perception of the organisation by government authorities.

4. How would you describe the relations with the Government of El Salvador? I think those were very good because we were able to mutually

benefit from this relationship. The Government of El Salvador

relied on WFP on many issues, from, for instance, being the first

respondent in situations of emergencies to being a strong ally

when negotiating issues, and also, when promoting the role of El

Salvador in many eyes. On the other hand, because they

recognised us as a strategic partner, we were able to ask them to

do things, for instance, taking over the programme but also

investing in their regional humanitarian hub in El Salvador, which

the government did and, agreeing on a number of new activities

and initiatives and funding the improvement of the quality of the

programme itself, and so on. I think we both saw a positive win-

win aspect out of the relationship and that explains why it worked

well.

5. How were the liaisons/relationships with the NGOs in El

Salvador? Their role is key to the distribution of humanitarian aid

and of food. To which NGOs were you associated with?

We are associated with a number of NGOs. The traditional US

NGOs, such as CRS and CARE and also PLAN, as well as other

NGOs, including Spanish NGOs, which were present in the

country, and so on. Therefore, a variety of actors and WFP were

particularly coordinated in the area of disaster response. But

126

NGOs in El Salvador worked a lot in rural development and

activities related to development. In general, I think that there was

a very good relationship.

6. How would you define the current situation that El Salvador is

going through now?

I think El Salvador is going well politically. El Salvador is going

through a change because for the first time in history there is a

left-party government that is running the country and has been

running the country for the last two years. That in itself is a

dramatic change for this very small country, because it implies a

huge challenge in reshaping society. The El Salvadorian society,

like many other Latin American societies, is fragmented, and it is

vertically divided into the rich and the poor, the whites and the

indigenous, and so on. Therefore, having a left-party government

in charge is a challenge and is, in fact, a way of redirecting

history. At the same time, it was a big challenge for the

government, because the left-party government was not prepared

and did not have the capacity to take on the responsibilities of

running a country. Therefore, it has been, I think, a challenge for

the government to establish themselves, takeover, and start to

manage the country.

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7. As El Salvador’s ex-country director, which are the major

difficulties that are met in bringing to an end a school feeding

project?

The project is not being brought to an end. The project is actually

being brought to full sustainability because, by handing over the

project to the government, and in a manner that underlines the

strategic importance of this programme for both educational and

nutritional purposes among the population of El Salvador, is a

great achievement. It is in fact a mission achieved on the side of

WFP and it is a way to ensure its sustainability. It would have

been much more fragile if the project continued to stay within

WFP and continued to depend on donor funding. Now that the

project has become part of the national budget it has been totally

internalised. I think we have achieved our objective.

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7.5 Interview with Mr. Marco Selva, Private Partnerships Manager. Communication, Public

Policy and Private Partnerships Division

1. WFP is an agency exclusively financed on a voluntary basis

either by government contributions or by the private sector. On

the basis of your previous work, how would you define the

relationship between WFP and the Italian Government? Which

measures has the Italian Government used to sustain WFP

operations worldwide in the past and the present?

As you said, WFP is funded exclusively on a voluntary basis. It

means that at the beginning of the year our budget is equal to zero

and WFP receives contributions based on the projects that WFP is

able to carry out in the field. This is the way we can then solicit

funding from the government/s, and/or the private sector. In

general terms, you have the largest humanitarian organization,

WFP, which is well funded. Therefore, there is an enormous trust

from the donors and donor communities with regards to the job

that WFP does on the ground. This trust is definitely high within

the Italian Government. The relationship between WFP and the

Italian Government is going very well, we have our headquarters

here in Rome and we belong to the so-called Rome-Based UN

Agencies. Therefore, this is a very important element that the

government of Italy brings to the international community.

Moreover, it is an important input that the Italian Government

brings to international development. Therefore, this is very high

on the agenda for the Italian Government in financing and

129

developing agricultural, food security, and nutrition policies,

which are more related to what WFP ’s mission.

2. On the basis of which criteria do the governments annually

decide on where to allocate funds? What percentage of funds

received by WFP do they manage to cover?

The first criteria would be, given the primary mandate of WFP, to

both respond to emergencies and assist people that are food

insecure due to natural disaster, political situations, or for other

reasons. This criterium is basically defining the priorities indicated

by WFP. Usually, when there is a discussion on a project, the

donor community is consulted from the very beginning. They

actually accomplish a part of designing the project themselves,

showing a constant interaction between what the needs of the

mission on the ground are and what resources are available from

the entire donor community to WFP, and to the international

community that will assist the population in need. Usually, WFP’s

projects are well funded, we more or less receive close to 100% of

the projects. Obviously, there are some projects that are very high

on the agenda because they are usually more visible, the so called

CNN effect. If you see people in difficulty on TV, governments

and political decision makers will also be more willing to respond

to a certain crisis. However, where we have some difficulties in

responding to the hidden crisis, it is always very difficult to attract

the attention of the political stakeholders/decision makers to fund

a less visible crisis.

130

3. To this day, contributions from the private sector have proven

fundamental. Does it appear to you that the private donors are

willing to partner and collaborate with WFP?

WFP is relatively new in partnering with private sector and private

corporate companies. We began with our largest donor to date,

TNT, in 2002. Since then we have put in place a strategy on how

to partner with the private sector. It is really meant as a

partnership which goes beyond philanthropy, meaning corporate

companies will make cash donations that try to achieve synergies

between the two parties. Therefore, we are looking at what the

private sector can offer to the fight against hunger worldwide and

what WFP can offer to the companies, stakeholders and

employees, basically a two-fold approach. One aspect looks at

expertise coming from the private sector. For example, we are

partnering a lot with the food companies and we are able to

develop new products that are affordable and that are more

nutritious for the people that we are targeting, that is, people who

do not have access to sufficient, nutritious food. We can get access

to a specific expertise from the food company in order to develop

new products that can meet these criteria. The other side is to

engage private donor communities and partners to create

awareness about the work that WFP accomplishes and the people

that suffer from hunger.

131

4. Fill the Cup is an awareness campaign that demonstrates how

little it takes to nourish a school child guaranteeing them a better

future. What is the link between private sector and school meals?

Fill the Cup is the main campaign that drives funds for school

meals. It is an outreach campaign that we aim at making it highly

visible. I think the Red Cup icon makes it very attractive to

everybody, specifically to the public at large with a very simple

message. We say that with only 20euro cents we can fill a cup that

provides school meals. This is, therefore, truly where the link is,

between the individual and the private companies. It sends a very

simple message that produces an immediate response that is easy

to communicate, providing a really attractive incentive to the

private companies.

5. It appears that the international or Italian community is more

willing to partner and collaborate with WFP. Can you explain

why?

There was an immediate response from the international private

sector because this was primarily WFP’s first target. But now we

are approaching Italian companies, as well as the Italian

community who is just as responsive as the corporations. It is only

a matter of time, but the Italian companies will also be willing to

partner and collaborate with WFP.

132

Appendices

UN, Provision of Food Surpluses to Food-Deficit People through the

United Nations System, United Nation General Assembly Resolution

1496 (XV), adopted on 27 October 1960 (New York: United Nations);

UN, World Food Programme, United Nation General Assembly

Resolution 1714 (XVI), adopted on 19 December 1961 (New York:

United Nations);

UN, General Assembly Resolution 1715 (XVI) United Nation Development

Decade. A programme for international economic co-operation (II)”,

adopted on 19 December 1961 (New York : United Nations);

UN, “Continuation of the World Food Programme, United Nation General

Assembly Resolution 2095 (XX)”, adopted on 20 December 1965 (New

York: United Nations);

UN, Programme of Studies of Multilateral Food Aid”, United Nation

General Assembly Resolution 2096 (XX), adopted on 20 December 1965

(New York: United Nations);

UN, Multilateral Food Aid, United Nation General Assembly Resolution

2462 (XXIII), adopted on 23 December 1968 (New York: United Nations);

UN, World Food Conferences, United Nations General Assembly

Resolution 3180 (XXVIII), adopted on 25 November 1973 (New York:

United Nations).

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

Dramatis Personae

WFP Executive Directors:

Addeke Hendrik Boerma was WFP’s first Executive Director, from May

1962 to December 1967. Boerma was born in the Netherlands in 1912,

graduating in horticulture and agricultural economics from the

Agricultural University at Wageningen in 1934. By 1938, he was a

government officer in charge of planning food supplies in the event of

war. During World War II, Boerma was smuggled out of enemy-

occupied Holland by British agents and flown to London to help plan

food relief supplies for the Netherlands. He became one of the

commissioners responsible for overseeing the reconstruction of the

Dutch agricultural economy after the war. By 1945, he was Acting

Director-General for food for the Netherlands, government

commissioner for Foreign Agricultural Relations and Netherlands

representative on the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization

of the United Nations (FAO). He joined the staff of FAO in 1948 and,

until 1951, was Regional Representative for Europe based in Rome. In

1951, when the headquarters of FAO moved to Rome from Washington,

DC, Boerma became Director of its Economics Division. In 1958, he

was made Head of FAO’s Program and Budget Service and in 1960 was

promoted to Assistant Director-General. He was elected as FAO’s

Director-General in 1967. For his services during and after the war,

Boerma was made a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion, the highest

civil order in the Netherlands, a Commander in the Order of Leopold II

of Belgium and Officer du Merit Agricole of France.

146

Sushil K. Dev was WFP’s Executive Director from January to August

1968 and Associate Executive Director thereafter until his retirement in

May 1969. An Indian citizen, born in 1907, Dev studied in India and

then at the London School of Economics. He entered the Indian Civil

Service before becoming Deputy Director of the Bureau of Social Affairs

at the United Nations in New York. Dev joined the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1957 as special assistant to

the Director-General and later became Director of FAO’s Rural

Institutions and Services Division. With the establishment of WFP, he

was appointed as Director of its Programme Development and Appraisal

Division and played a major part in the formulation of WFP’s policies

and programmes.

Francisco Aquino was WFP Executive Director from July 1968 to May

1976. Born in El Salvador in 1919, Aquino studied agronomy in his

native country and later economics at Harvard University. He was chief

of the Grains Section of the Commodities and Trade Division at the Food

and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome,

Italy in the 1950s before returning to El Salvador where he served as

minister of agriculture and president of the Central Reserve Bank, and

was his country’s representative on the governing bodies of the

International Monetary Fund and various international banks.

Before assuming the post of Executive Director, he was technical

manager at the Inter American Development Bank in Washington, DC.

He stood unsuccessfully for the post of FAO Director-General in the

election of 1975 and resigned in May 1976.

Thomas C.M. Robinson was WFP Executive Director from May 1976 to

September 1977. Born in the United States in 1912, Robinson studied

agricultural economics and statistics before holding a number of posts in

147

the US foreign service in Washington DC and abroad. In the early 1960s,

before joining WFP as director of its Resources Management Division

from September 1962 to March 1969, he was head of the Foodstuffs

Division of the US State Department where he represented his country at

meetings of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

(FAO) and other international bodies.

Garson N. Vogel was WFP Executive Director from October 1977 to his

death in April 1981. Born in Canada in 1918, Vogel studied history and

economics and later, law, and was called to the Manitoba Bar after the

Second World War. Following a career in the grain trade, he joined the

Canadian Wheat Board in 1964 and became chief commissioner before

joining WFP.

Bernado de Azevedo Brito was WFP Executive Director from May 1981

to his resignation in February 1982, and Deputy Executive Director from

January 1979 to May 1981.A Brazilian citizen, born in 1935, de Azevedo

Brito trained as a diplomat and served in his country’s embassies in

Denmark, Norway and Spain prior to heading the economic section of

the Brazilian mission to the United Nations in New York and

representing Brazil on the United Nations Development Programme

Council (UNDP) and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

From 1975, he was head of the Brazilian permanent mission to the Food

and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and

represented Brazil on the governing bodies of FAO and WFP.

Juan Felipe Yriat was WFP Executive Director from February to April

1982. Born in Uruguay in 1919, Yriat attended Law School at the

University of Montevideo. As a career diplomat, Yriat held senior

positions in his country’s embassies in Sweden and Finland and was

Director-General of the Uruguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs from

148

1959-1962. He was Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1963 and to the

United States until December 1968. Yriat, who signed the founding

constitution of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations (FAO) on behalf of his country, was appointed as the same

organisation’s Assistant Director-General for Latin America in 1968 as

well as FAO Regional Representative for Latin America in Santiago,

Chile. In 1972, he became Assistant Director-General of FAO’s

Development Department, and in 1980, Special Assistant to the Director-

General of FAO, for whom he undertook a number of high policy

missions. He retired in February 1984.

James C. Ingram was WFP Executive Director for two terms of office

from April 1982 to his retirement in April 1992. Ingram, an Australian

citizen born in 1928, studied economics and political science at

Melbourne University before starting a career in the Australian foreign

service. He served as an Australian representative to the European

Economic Community (EEC), Indonesia and the United Nations before

being appointed as Assistant Secretary of the ministry’s Asian and

Pacific department. Appointed ambassador to the Philippines (1970-73),

high commissioner to Canada and several Caribbean states (1973-74)

and director-general of the Australian Development Assistance Bureau

(1975-82), during which he served as Australia’s alternate governor of

the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the International Fund

for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and Australian representative at

high level meetings of the Development Assistance Committee of the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a

member of the Australian National Commission for the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and a

member of the North-South Round Table and of the Tidewater Group.

149

Ingram was the first Australian to head a United Nations body and, at the

time of his appointment as WFP Executive Director, received Australia’s

highest civil honour for his services to his country. He received the Alan

Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Award for his work as WFP Executive

Director and served on the governing body of the International Food

Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Upon his retirement, he became

director of the Australian Institute for International Affairs and has

written on arrangements for the provision of international humanitarian

assistance.

Catherine Bertini served as Executive Director from 1992 to 2002.

At the time of her appointment, Ms. Bertini was the first American

woman to head a UN organisation. Re-appointed for a second five-year

term in 1997, she oversaw WFP's emergence as the world's largest food

aid organisation. After taking up office in April 1992, Ms. Bertini

ushered in a new era at WFP. Under her direction, the Agency moved

away from simply providing food aid and instead, focused on women as

the most effective means of ensuring fair food distribution. Bertini's

reasoning for the shift was simple, but critical. In almost all poor

societies, it is women who grow, prepare and serve food to their families.

When food aid is provided as part of the larger scheme to educate and

train women, they are often able to lead their families out of

poverty. Over 80 percent of WFP Country Offices now organise women

into food aid committees to identify and help beneficiaries. In March

2000, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan named Bertini as his Special

Envoy to the Horn of Africa. Her subsequent mission to the drought-hit

region helped avert the risk of famine. Ms. Bertini stepped down at the

beginning of April 2002, when her second term expired to make way for

James T.Morris.

150

James T. Morris served as the tenth Executive Director of the United

Nations World Food Programme from April 2002 to April 2007. In July

2002, Mr Morris was appointed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's

Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa, a region

which continues to be gripped by a major food emergency. In 2003, he

successfully guided WFP in carrying out the largest humanitarian

operation in history, feeding 26 million Iraqis. Prior to leading WFP, Mr

Morris combined a distinguished career of business, philanthropic and

humanitarian leadership with a personal life of public service. Both his

career and his voluntary activities have always reflected a commitment

to improving the lives of others with a special interest in young people at

risk and giving something back to his city, his country and the

international community. After serving six years in city government in

Indianapolis, Indiana, primarily as chief of staff for mayor Richard

Lugar, Mr Morris moved to the Lilly Endowment, Inc. in 1973. He

began as director of community development for the Endowment, one of

the world’s largest charitable foundations. Mr Morris moved to vice

president, executive vice president and then president, and served in that

role for six years until 1989. His principal interests have been in building

communities, serving vulnerable children at risk and leadership

development.

Mr Morris then became chairman and chief executive officer of IWC

Resources Corporation and Indianapolis Water Company. Under his

leadership, IWC grew to a multi-million dollar holding company. He

focused on employee development through recognition programs,

diversification, human relations and educational opportunities. The

company experienced substantial growth in both regulated and

unregulated areas. While serving in these leadership roles and on several

corporate boards, Mr Morris was affiliated with the United States

151

Olympic Committee as treasurer and as chairman of the audit and ethics

committee, was chairman of the NCAA Foundation, was a member of

the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross, and was chairman

of the Board of Trustees of Indiana University. He has contributed time

and guidance to many civic and community organizations.

152

Acknowledgements

I feel that I should conclude this dissertation with a moment of intimate

reflection.

These pages are the result of a very unique path that has, for me,

reached a very important milestone in my life.

Many components have rendered it as such: changes in direction and life

choices, growth and professional training, difficulties, satisfaction and

joy, doubts and fear, but overall a great desire to become involved.

The academic and professional work reflected in this paper encompasses

strong cooperation and a mutual effort.

These are pages that, with their imperfections, conceal their pride when

being discussed.

I would like to thank Professor Carla Meneguzzi for her humanity, which

goes beyond her expertise. Thank you for giving me the possibility for

expressing what I wrote and for being by my side, providing me with the

valuable tools, not only within an academic environment, but also in my

life.

I thank the Italian Committee for the World Food Programme (WFP),

and in particular, “my guides”, for placing confidence in me and for

giving me the opportunity to express myself. Therefore, I thank Catherine

and Francesco, from which I learn everyday, politically, operationally

and critically, in order to meet the challenges that each day carries.

I am grateful to the WFP for showing me a world that needs our

commitment and our transparent professionalism.

Thanks to Ramiro Armando de Oliveira Lopes da Silva, Amir Mahmoud

Abdulla, Ilaria Dettori, Marco Selva and Carlo Scaramella for having

153

contributed to dissolve any doubts and concerns through their

interviews. I thank them for their attention and sensitivity they showed.

Thank you to Catherine Loria, my precious support.

I thank all of those who have been by my side, sharing with me the

satisfactions achieved and supporting me through times of difficulty.

Therefore, thanks to Riccardo, Silvia and Marianna, my eternal

confidants.

Thank you, Antonio, who, like a ray of sunshine, came into my life.

A very special thank to Cristina, a little angel that I met along the way.

Lastly, my deepest appreciation can only be addressed to my family:

to Lucio and the force that comes over me when I hug him,

to Gabriele, and his smile that fills my heart with joy,

to Giulia, unique and irreplaceable,

to Paola, my point of reference,

to my Parents, and the immense love that I feel for them.

154

Ringraziamenti

Questo elaborato non può che concludersi con un mio momento di

intima riflessione.

Queste pagine rappresentano il risultato di un percorso unico, di un

ciclo che in questo momento raggiunge una tappa importante.

Più ingredienti lo hanno reso tale: cambiamenti di rotta e scelte di vita,

crescita e formazione professionale, difficoltà, soddisfazioni e gioie,

dubbi e paure, ma soprattutto una gran voglia di mettermi in gioco.

Il percorso accademico, professionale e lavorativo trovano in questo

scritto una sintesi, una simbiosi.

Sono pagine che, nella loro imperfezione, celano dietro di loro

l’orgoglio di essere discusse e raccontate.

Ringrazio la Prof.ssa Carla Meneguzzi per la sua umanità oltre che

grande professionalità.

La ringrazio per avermi dato la possibilità di dar voce a quanto scritto,

per essere stata al mio fianco, fornendomi strumenti preziosi non solo in

ambito accademico ma anche di vita.

Ringrazio il Comitato Italiano per il Programma Alimentare Mondiale

(WFP) ed in particolare “le mie guide” per aver riposto in me fiducia,

per avermi dato la possibilità di esprimermi.

Ringrazio, quindi, Catherine e Francesco, dai quali cerco di apprendere,

giorno dopo giorno, senso politico, operativo e critico, per poter essere

all’altezza delle sfide che ogni giorno ci poniamo.

Ringrazio il WFP per avermi mostrato un mondo che necessita del

nostro impegno e della nostra trasparente professionalità.

155

Grazie a Ramiro Armando de Oliveira Lopes da Silva, Amir Mahmoud

Abdulla, Ilaria Dettori, Marco Selva e Carlo Scaramella, per aver

contribuito, attraverso i loro interventi a sciogliere dubbi e criticità.

Li ringrazio per l’attenzione e sensibilità dimostrata.

Grazie a Catherine Loria, mio prezioso supporto.

Ringrazio tutti coloro che sono stati al mio fianco, gioendo con me per le

soddisfazioni raggiunte e sostenendomi nei momenti di difficoltà.

Grazie quindi a Riccardo, Silvia e Marianna, mie eterne certezze.

Ringrazio Antonio, che come un raggio di sole è entrato nella mia vita.

Un grazie speciale a Cristina, un piccolo angelo incontrato nel mio

cammino.

Ma il mio ultimo pensiero non può che essere rivolto alla mia famiglia:

al piccolo Lucio e alla forza che abbracciandolo mi pervade,

a Gabriele e al suo sorriso, in grado di riempirmi il cuore di gioia,

a Giulia, unica ed insostituibile,

a Paola, mio punto di riferimento,

ai miei Genitori e all’amore immenso che provo per loro.

156

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