The World Food Program (WFP) is a Rome-based United Nations agency working to combat hunger and poverty around the world. Established in 1963, it provides relief assistance to victims of natural disasters and wars, and supplies food aid to poor people in developing countries to build self-reliant families.
The program has offices in 83 countries. The largest multilateral food aid organization, WFP provides 26 per cent of global food aid. In 1994, it delivered 3.3 million tons of food aid by ship, plane, barge, railroad and truck. WFP also arranges for the purchase and transport of a growing share of food aid provided bilaterally by individual countries.
WFP assistance during 1994 directly benefited 57 million poor people. Of this number, 32.5 million were victims of emergencies like civil war and natural disasters. WFP-assisted development projects involved 24.5 million people. WFP's total expenditure in 1994 was $1.5 billion.
WFP has become the main channel for and coordinator of food aid for refugees. In 1994, emergency relief assistance accounted for 81 per cent of expenditures, for a total of $1.1 billion and a food aid commitment of some 2.4 million tons. Women and children, who suffer most in emergencies caused by war or drought, are the main beneficiaries of WFP assistance.
Because of the increase in the number of emergencies worldwide, WFP was able to allocate only 19 per cent of its resources in 1994 to development projects that would actually help free people from the need for food aid.
The hungry poor who receive WFP development assistance include landless agricultural workers, small-scale farmers and the urban poor-people below the poverty line with insufficient food and insufficient money to buy food for themselves and their families. More than half of the beneficiaries of WFP development aid obtain family rations by participating in labor-intensive food-for-work programs to build infrastructure and create assets essential for their longer-term advancement. Most of the remaining beneficiaries receive WFP assistance through human resource development projects such as nutrition and health improvement schemes and education and training programs.
WFP is the largest supporter of development projects involving and benefiting poor women; the largest provider of grant assistance within the United Nation system to sub-Saharan Africa; the largest provider of grant assistance to environmental protection and improvement; and the largest purchaser of food and services in developing countries.
Over the past three decades, WFP has invested more than $14 billion to combat hunger, promote economic and social development and deliver relief assistance in emergencies.
From Basic Facts About the United Nations. Published by United Nations Department of Public Information. Copyright 1995 United Nations.
