WFP

World Food Programme

1. Facts and figures

Type of organisation: Programme financed through voluntary contributions

Established in: 1961

Headquarters: Rome

Number of country offices: 78

Head of organisation: Executive Director Ertharin Cousin (USA)

Dates of Board meetings in 2013: 18–19 February, 3–7 June and 4–8 November

Norway’s representation on Board: 2010 – 12, 2014 – 16

Number of Norwegian staff: 6

Competent ministry: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Website: www.wfp.org

Mandate and areas of activity

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation. WFP’s mandate is to use food aid to support economic and social development, provide humanitarian assistance for refugees and other needy persons in emergency situations and protracted crises, and promote global food security. WFP has five strategic object-ives, which are set out in its Strategic Plan for 2008–2013:

■ Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies.

■ Prevent acute hunger and invest in disaster preparedness and mitigation measures.

■ Restore and rebuild lives and livelihoods in post-conflict or transition situations.

■ Reduce chronic hunger and undernutrition.

■ Strengthen the capacities of countries to reduce hunger, including through hand-over strategies and local pur-chases.

Few changes have been made in these objectives in the draft of the Strategic Plan for 2014–2017.

WFP has a central mandate and plays a unique role in acute emergencies and in preventing acute hunger and disasters. Assisting bilateral agencies and non-governmental organisations in humanitarian crises falls within WFP’s mandate, and WFP’s logistical and emergency relief expertise is often crucial for other actors. WFP also plays a role in crisis prevention and reconstruction in the wake of conflict and disasters. WFP helps to achieve United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Through school-meals programmes and special nutrition programmes, WFP also contributes to achieving MDG 2 on universal education, MDG 3 on promoting gender equality, MDG 4 on reducing child mortality and MDG 5 on improving maternal health. In January 2012, the UN Secretary-General and FAO’s Director-General appointed Ertharin Cousin from the USA as WFP’s new Executive Director.

Results achieved in 2012

Good progress was made in 2011–2012 in formulating policy in the fields of nutrition and humanitarian protection. WFP continued to pursue its reorientation from delivering food assistance to providing food security support, which includes local food purchasing, emphasis on improving nutrition and increased use of cash and vouchers. WFP maintains an extensive local presence over time in all crisis areas and has access to knowledge of local conditions that is crucial to the success of humanitarian interventions and peace operations. WFP has strengthened its partnerships with other organisations through global coordination. Cooperation is important at country level to optimise task-sharing, effective resource use and development of coherent national food-security and nutrition strategies. WFP has now increased its focus on ways in which it can help to build up local capacity and capability to prevent and respond to crises.

In 2012, WFP provided food security support to 97.2 million people in 80 countries. The Programme distributed 3.5 million metric tonnes of food to households in acute need. In the past few years, forward purchasing of food in anticipation of a crisis has reduced delivery time by two months, an improvement that has been made possible by flexible donors like Norway. Over the last four years, WFP has signed contracts for 308,000 metric tonnes of food in 20 pilot countries, generating add-itional income of USD 77 million for smallholder farmers. In 2012, WFP bought food in 93 countries, 75 per cent of which was bought in developing countries. Cash-based interventions rose by 50 per cent in 2012. Although the number of people who received cash and vouchers increased from 1.1 million in 2009 to 6 million in 2012, this is still a small percentage of the total number of recipients.

In cooperation with local partners, assistance was provided for 1.5 million people in Syria, both in areas controlled by the government and areas under rebel control. A total of 0.5 million people received assistance in refugee camps outside
Syria. In the Sahel, WFP responded early to the crisis by building up resiliency in rural areas, while in April 2012 WFP launched a six-month emergency-relief operation. The political crisis in Mali triggered a flow of refugees and the security situation deteriorated in neighbouring countries as well. Nonetheless, 10 million people received assistance in areas
affected by drought and conflict in the Sahel in 2012. WFP plays a leading logistical role for a variety of organisations engaged in humanitarian response work, and in 2012 headed these efforts in the Sahel, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. In the telecommunications sector, support was provided for projects in Mali, South Sudan and Syria, in addition to 21 other ongoing operations. Together with FAO, WFP coordinated the joint efforts to provide humanitarian assistance for food security in 20 countries in 2012.

In 2012, WFP distributed food to around 125,000 schools and around 20,000 health centres. WFP repaired or built 14,000
kilometres of roads, 400 bridges and 1,400 wells. The organi-sation improved 328,000 hectares of farmland, provided training for 65,000 public employees and helped to establish 59 food security early-warning systems. WFP programmes helped to prevent 7.4 million children from suffering from acute malnutrition. WFP provided nutritional supplements for 3.9 million pregnant women and nursing mothers.

WFP contributed to the joint, coordinated UN efforts to achieve the MDGs. The Rio+20 conference on sustainable development played a particularly significant role in promoting a common understanding of the importance of food security and nutrition in sustainable development. WFP also partnered with UNICEF on the Scale-up Nutrition initiative.

2. Assessments: Results, effectiveness and monitoring

The organisation’s results-related work

WFP is well-run, documents its results and has carried out major reforms of systems for programme management, finance and human-resource management and operational tools. However, since WFP has a needs-based budget and around 90 per cent of donor contributions are earmarked, it is a challenge for the Executive Board to determine priorities in the use of funding.

In 2013, WFP conducted negotiations on a new Strategic Plan for 2014–2017, which clarifies WFP’s role in middle-income countries, defines humanitarian assistance as its main focus, identifies its main areas of expertise and comparative advantages, and coordinates its operations with the strategic processes of other funds and programmes. WFP submits annual reports to the Executive Board on its achievement of results and calls attention to challenges and lessons learned that can prompt changes in priorities and working methods.

WFP’s strategic results framework makes it possible to quantify the number of persons that the Programme has reached with emergency relief and the progress made each year in terms of achieving results. Collecting data in the field at country level is a demanding process, and in many projects it is difficult to report on the indicators that have been defined. However, the latest annual report (2010) shows substantial improvements. WFP’s Management Plan for 2013–2015 emphasises efforts to strengthen monitoring and evaluation capacity, and to integrate gender equality into all projects and programmes. WFP’s evaluation work has improved in the past few years. Although the Office of Evaluation formally reports to the Executive Board through the Executive Director, the reports are now submitted to the Board without having to be approved by WFP’s leadership staff. All evaluation reports are available to the public on WFP’s website. However, ensuring systematic follow-up of evaluation recommendations still poses a challenge.

Planning and budgeting systems

WFP has rolling three-year management plans, the current plan covering the period from 2013 to 2015. The Executive Board adopts an annual work programme and administrative budget. The Board receives an annual results report, and submits an annual activity report to ECOSOC and FAO. Furthermore, an annual evaluation report is prepared for the Board, and a mid-term review of WFP’s strategic plans is carried out.

Oversight and anti-corruption

WFP’s oversight bodies consist of an external and an internal auditor, as well as an audit committee. External audits are conducted by the supreme audit institution of one of the Member States, which reports directly to the Executive Board. Internal audits are headed by the Office of the Inspector General, which reports to WFP’s Executive Director. WFP’s financial statements, work programme, budget and strategic plans are also considered by the UN’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) and FAO’s Finance Committee. All internal audit reports are posted on WFP’s website unless this is precluded by considerations of personal privacy. The internal audit function is part of the administrative budget approved by the Executive Board.

WFP has a clear policy of zero tolerance for corruption, and has an Ethics Office tasked with ensuring that WFP staff carry out their work in compliance with the UN’s ethical guidelines. WFP has special guidelines for the protection of whistle-blowers and is a member of the International Aid Transparency Initiative. In 2012, WFP was the first UN organisation to publish a Risk Appetite Statement, which explains how WFP deals with various types of risk.

Institution-building and national ownership

WFP is strengthening its role in partnership and coordination in both the development arena and in humanitarian work. Wherever possible, WFP works closely with national authorities, particularly with a view to building capacity to enable national institutions to once again meet the population’s needs. Strengthening its cooperation with others gives WFP an opportunity to set somewhat stricter priorities as to where and in what way WFP engages in various crises. WFP participates in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and prepares country programmes within the framework of national development plans in several countries. WFP and FAO are co-leaders of food security clusters for the coordination of humanitarian assistance.

Willingness to learn and change

In the past few years, WFP has moved from primarily focusing on food distribution to developing new methods for supporting food security through local purchasing and use of cash and vouchers. In this process, WFP has shown a great willingness and ability to change, but so far mechanisms have only partly been established for the systematic follow-up of evaluations. Upon assuming office in 2012, WFP’s new Executive Director initiated an organisational review to adapt the Programme to these new challenges. This has facilitated good collaboration, on the whole, between WFP and the Executive Board on strengthening the Programme. The work of the Board is dynamic and results-oriented.

3. Norway’s policy towards WPF

WFP is one of Norway’s most important humanitarian partners, as it is the only international organisation capable of delivering emergency food relief on a large scale in difficult, often dangerous conditions. In humanitarian situations, WFP’s logistical and emergency-relief expertise is crucial to the entire UN system and other humanitarian actors. Norway considers it important to safeguard WFP’s comparative advantages as a dynamic, effective disaster-relief agency. To ensure that effective emergency relief reaches those who need it most, it is important that WFP strengthen its focus on needs assessments and its partnerships with other actors.

Norway also emphasises the need to see the entire range of WFP activities, from crisis response and reconstruction to prevention and development, in an overall context. This is important to ensure that humanitarian efforts are based on a holistic understanding of the causes of hunger and undernutrition and to underpin efforts to ensure long-term food security, nutrition and development of agriculture and local food production. Norway underscores the necessity of WFP giving priority to procuring food locally or in other developing countries, donors not tying their contributions to their own production, and WFP making use of new forms of assistance, such as cash and vouchers, where these are most appropriate.

The aim of the UN reform process is to achieve an effective system of task-sharing and a coherent humanitarian architecture. Cooperation is important to promote task-sharing, efficient and effective resource use and the development of coherent national food security and nutrition strategies. There are grey areas where WFP’s role extends beyond the provision of emergency relief. In such cases, needs assessments, phase-out strategies and partnerships with other actors will be particularly important. WFP’s preventive efforts in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa helped to avert hunger in 2011/2012. Norway has actively urged WFP to strengthen its focus on promoting gender equality and the role of women in food security and nutrition work. Norway also advocates designing school meals programmes so as to counteract the high drop-out rate among schoolgirls in particular. Results as regards gender-equality targets are reported on specifically in WFP’s annual report. Norway is committed to the protection of civilians, especially women and children, in war and emergency situations.

Norway has pointed out that adapting to climate change and more extreme weather conditions requires a longer-term perspective. Norway therefore supports WFP’s intensified focus on ways in which the Programme can contribute to increasing local capacity and capability to prevent and respond to emergencies. Norwegian funding must not be used for genetically modified food. Until the end of 2012, Norway was a member of the Executive Board and held the Western Group’s seat in the Executive Board Bureau, while also serving as coordinator for the OECD countries. Norway will resume its seat on the Executive Board in 2014 for another three-year term. In 2012, Norway entered into a four-year strategic partnership agreement with WFP. The agreement secures greater predictability for WFP with regard to Norway’s contributions, and strengthens cooperation between WFP and Norway, among other things with regard to knowledge of the situation in key conflict areas. The first annual bilateral meeting under the agreement was held in January 2013.

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In 2013, WFP presented a Synthesis Report of the Joint WFP and UNHCR Impact Evaluations on the Contribution of Food Assistance to Durable Solutions in Protracted Refugee Situations in Chad, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Rwanda. A general result for all the countries was the achievement of the short-term goals of meeting the food needs of refugees who arrived at camps in the initial stages of the crises. However, the evaluations found that as the crises dragged on, the food security of many of the refugees had deteriorated. The objective of the refugees becoming self-reliant in the long term has largely not been achieved. The report also shows that women and girls are particularly exposed to various types of risk, nutritionally and with respect to their personal safety. Two key factors that affect the situation are the short-term, unpredictable financing provided by donors and the host country’s unwillingness to permit integration and thereby facilitate more durable solutions. WFP and UNHCR’s inability to solve these challenges alone is acknowledged. WFP and UNHCR will prepare a joint strategy and an operational framework for refugees in protracted crises and the role that food assistance can play. The strategy and framework are to be implemented by June 2014.

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Visiting address: 7. juni plassen 1 / Victoria terasse 5, Oslo, P.O.Box 8114 Dep, NO-0032 Oslo, Norway.