Food for thought - Latest developments concerning the UN's World Food Programme

Speaker: Christiane Berthiaume, Senior Public Affairs Officer, United Nations’ World Food Programme
 
Chair: Hélène Deslauriers, President, Canadians in Europe, Belgian Chapter
 
Date: 29 November 2004
 
At a membership meeting on November 29th 2004, the Centre for European Policy Studies, in collaboration with Candians in Europe, hosted a presentation by Christiane Berthiaume on the World Food Programme. This United Nations’ agency was set-up in 1963 with the mission of eradicating hunger worldwide.
 
A hungry man is not a free man
 
At the outset of her presentation, Mrs Berthiaume set the scence by reminding some figures on global hunger and poverty. Currently close to 850 million people worldwide – a number of people equivalent to the cumulated population of the EU, the US, Canada and Japan – are undernourished. This underfeeding causes one child-death every five seconds and the death of 25,000 people per day – making hunger the first cause of death worldwide. Bad infrastructure, bad economic policies, armed conflicts, natural disasters and poverty are all at the root of this problem. In geographic terms, the areas most affected are Africa and to a lesser extent Asia.
 
Apart from being a moral imperative, combating hunger should also occur out of an economic necessity – food shortage indeed deters people from being productive as they lack time and energy to work. Futhermore, hunger is also at the root of instability and insecurity.
 
Christiane Berthiaume drew a direct link between the alleviation of hunger and the achievement of the first six Millenium Development Goals (eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases).
 
The World Food Programme (WFP) has now become the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency. In 2003, it fed over 100 million people – 70-80% of them women and children – in 81 countries. The WFP has the double-mandate of intervening in emergency situations and setting-up more structured programmes targetted towards social and economic development. Over the past decades, this first pillar increasingly gained importance and now accounts for about ¾ of its budget – thereby reversing the initial distribution. The WFP is supported by voluntary in-kind or in-cash contributions by donors and intervenes at the request of a country in distress, by providing it with food and putting in place the logistical support for the aid to reach its beneficiaries. As contributions are earmarked for specific projects, the WFP’s freedom of choice is somewhat limited however.
 
Current emergency interventions include the Darfour region, northern Uganda, North Korea and southern Africa. Among the structured projects, Mrs. Berthiaume mentionned the school feeding programme, the specific targeting of women and food-for-work programmes.
 
School feeding fulfilled indeed the double-purpose of nourishing children while at the same time providing them with an incentive to attend school and obtain a basic education. In certain cases these kinds of programmes increased school attendance by over 300%! The specific need to target women arose from the fact that 70% of the people currently suffering from hunger are women. Besides reducing famine among them and the adverse effects of their malnutrition on children’s health at birth, the distribution of food via women appeared to be the most efficient channel for the food aid to reach its meant receivers. Finally, the food-for-work scheme seeks to ensure the reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed by a conflict or a natural disaster, by exchanging food for reconstruction efforts.
 
See the slides of Mrs. Berthiaume’s presentation.