World Food Programme (WFP)
Objectives
In emergencies, we get food to where it is needed, saving the lives of victims of war, civil conflict and natural disasters. After the cause of an emergency has passed, we use food to help communities rebuild their shattered lives.
WFP is part of the United Nations system and is voluntarily funded.
Born in 1962, 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. We work towards that vision with our 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.
In 2009 we aim to reach more than 100 million people with food assistance in 74 countries. Around 10,000 people work for the organization, most of them in remote areas, directly serving the hungry poor.
WFP's five objectives:
- Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies
- Prepare for emergencies
- Restore and rebuild lives after emergencies
- Reduce chronic hunger and undernutrition everywhere
- Strengthen the capacity of countries to reduce hunger
Food Assistance Needs in Syria:
Violence in Iraq has caused hundreds of thousands of people to seek safety in Syria, placing a heavy burden on the country’s social services. With limited purchasing power and soaring food prices, many of the Iraqis who fled to Syria are experiencing increasing difficulty in meeting their basic household and food needs, and are resorting to distress strategies such as selling assets and incurring debt to meet their basic needs.
Syria’s rural and Bedouin communities in arid and semi-arid areas of the country face escalating economic difficulties as their high dependency on agriculture leaves them vulnerable to erratic rainfall and cyclical droughts. Following the worst drought in four decades – with total rainfall during the winter of 2007/08 much below average – crop and livestock production, natural vegetation and the overall livelihoods of farmers and herders and their families were highly affected.
Female illiteracy and low school attendance rate are additional development challenges to the country. In the north-eastern governorates of Syria, drop-out rates are reaching as high as 45 percent as children leave school to work or to participate in traditional seasonal migration. Moreover, the illiteracy rate for women is as high as 26.4 percent, leaving women marginalized from economic activities.
WFP’s Activities in Syria:
Since 1964, WFP has provided about US$400 million worth of food assistance to Syria through development and emergency operations. The development projects targeted the poorest rural communities in marginalized areas, primarily small subsistence farmers, herders, schoolchildren and rural women, whereas the emergency operations targeted the victims of the collapse of the Zeyzoun Dam in 2002 and Lebanese refugees during the war in Lebanon in 2006.
Current WFP activities include:
Assistance to Displaced Iraqis in Syria: In March 2007, WFP began supplying basic commodities to Iraqis living in Syria through an emergency operation in partnership with UNHCR and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Organization. WFP’s assistance aims to save lives by providing safe, sufficient and appropriate food. The current US$33 million project (the Syria component of a regional operation which began in January 2008) targets 168,500 of the most vulnerable displaced Iraqis in Syria.
Food for Education: This development project aims to encourage schoolchildren and illiterate women living in rural, marginalized and food-insecure areas of the north-eastern governorates to attend schools or literacy classes in return for food assistance. During the first year of this three-year project, WFP and the Syrian Government have reached 24,700 students and 4,600 illiterate women and aim to reach 28,800 students and 5,400 illiterate women during the second year.
Assistance to Victims of Drought: The emergency operation aims to mitigate the destruction of livelihoods and preserve assets of the herding families whose traditional coping mechanisms proved to be unsustainable in the context of high food prices and drought. It also seeks to prevent further massive migration to urban centres and a further reduction in food consumption levels. Assistance will be provided to 40,000 herding families (200,000 in total) with less than 100 heads of animals, identified as the most vulnerable households among the drought-affected herders.
|
