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| Sunday, 29 August 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The World Food Program - Annual Report 2003 : The reality of hunger by Carol Aloysius A stark picture of two young half naked boys standing facing the camera with the caption: "My older brother once brought some chicken home that he found in the dump. The whole family was poisoned", tells it all..
Summing up some of the massive challenges that his organisation faced in the year under review, James Morris, Executive Director of WFP says in the Preface to his Report, " By any measure , WFP was put to extraordinary tests in 2003, fighting hunger in a world that sometimes seems intent on producing even more hungry people". Hunger apart, "Violence, conflict, terrorism, natural disasters and the unyielding pandemic of HIV/AIDS all came together to stretch the limits of WFP and the United Nations family", he observes. He recalls how, at the beginning of 2003, the WFP was faced with, "Unprecedented needs around the globe". This in turn led to a record number of beneficiaries. By the time the year had ended the WFP had delivered double the amount of its previous year- "an astounding US$ 3.3 billion of aid to more than 100 million hungry people in 81 countries around the world. While this represented a record in itself, the colossal number masks the myriad demands placed upon the Program which worked around the clock to try and save lives and prevent malnutrition in countries in crisis such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, in Asia, Latin America, Liberia and North Korea. " Our ability to handle so many major crises simultaneously, in so many trouble spots around the world, is a true testament to the dedication of WFP staff, to the contributions of our host governments, UN and NGO partners and to the confidence of our donors", Morris acknowledges in his Preface. Of all the countries where the WFP played godfather in times of crisis, the Iraq operation was its biggest and most dangerous, besides being the most time consuming as well. Calling the operation "the largest food aid operation in history', the Report describes in graphic detail, how more than two million tons of food were moved in just six months. "It required WFP and its donors to marshal extraordinary food, cash and human resources. And it required working in a highly unstable and dangerous environment, made poignantly obvious by the deaths of twenty two people in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, while many others including WFP staff were seriously injured in the attack." Not surprising thus that a whole chapter has been devoted to this particular operation, complete with graphic pictures and human interest stories and titled 'Focus on Iraq'. The WFP needs donors for its program. If donations either by way of cash or food and other provisions do not flow in readily, delivering relief to hundreds and thousands of refugees of war, famine starved persons, victims of earthquakes and other natural disasters will not get the food and essentials they need in time. The Report highlights this fact by citing its operations in the Democratic Republic of Korea as an example. Here, the Program had to struggle to meet the needs of 6.4 million people because of dwindling donations and deliveries, frequently forcing it to decide who needed food the most: children, women or the elderly, By the end of the year the WFP was able to meet less than 60 per cent of the operation's needs in this respect. The World Food Program reaches one of the widest population targets in any global aid program. Crises apart, it helps families who tackle the grinding reality of hunger everyday through school feeding, mother-child health interventions, food for training and food security work in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and a host of other partners. "The response to the immense challenges facing WFP and its beneficiaries on a global level was excellent', states the Report in retrospect, adding that the sum of US$ 32.6 billion contributed by donors surpassed contributions of the previous year by 43 per cent, and that for the first time contributions from governments that have not traditionally donated to WFP also reached a new height. When some eight hundred million hungry people in developing countries who live on the razor edge of starvation, all it takes is a bad crop of a violent storm to tip them over the edge into desperate poverty. These vulnerable communities have not been forgotten by the WFP which has made its presence felt by reaching out to the famine starved people of South Africa, Ethiopia,the earthquake victims in Iran and beyond to households headed by children or grandparents affected by AIDS in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Authentic Colour photographs of actual victims of war, and natural disasters that are liberally splashed across the Report, along with several human interest stories on the impact of hunger and poverty on the beneficiaries themselves, makes this Report read more like a documentation of human suffering, than an annual report reviewing the activities of the world's biggest food aid programs. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
Poverty and hunger. Two of the greatest and unacceptable evils of
modern society is what this Report is all about, which records the most
recent achievements (and failures) of World Food Program (WFP) struggling
to deal with the overwhelming burden of hunger and to meet the first of
those noble Millennium Development Goals of halving global hunger by the
year 2015.
