WFP is looking to raise funds of $4.4 billion for 2011 to feed 90 million to 100 million hungry in nearly 75 countries
LONDON (AlertNet) - The U.N.'s food aid agency faces another challenging year as it grapples with a significant shortfall in funding, rising world food prices and the aftermath of major humanitarian emergencies including the Haiti earthquake and Pakistan floods.
For 2010, the World Food Programme (WFP) received only a little over half of the $6.86 billion it had requested from government donors, the private sector and international financial institutions.
It raised around $3.77 billion, down from $4.01 billion in 2009, and $5.05 billion in 2008 – the year when a food price crisis drove up hunger around the world.
That year also saw high-profile banking woes and the credit crunch, leading to huge bailouts for the financial industry and a slowdown in the world economy. The subsequent squeeze on government budgets is a major reason why funding for aid organisations like the WFP has been cut by some rich nations.
"The year 2010 fell at a time when many of the biggest donors are facing huge economic challenges at home because of the global downturn," WFP spokesman Greg Barrow told AlertNet from Rome. "It is a challenging environment for an agency that raises funds voluntarily."
Government contributions dropped from $4.67 billion in 2008 to $3.44 billion in 2010, with some of the biggest percentage cuts coming from European countries including Spain, France and Germany. The United States, while remaining the largest donor by far, has also pared its annual donation in the past two years.
That means hard choices for WFP officials in the field, who must economise on their programmes "without leaving the hungriest of the hungry high and dry", Barrow said.
"This puts a lot of strain on us operationally and forces us to take steps we don't really want to take," he explained.
Options include cutting food rations and shifting focus to target only the most vulnerable, including very young children, pregnant and nursing mothers, the elderly and the sick.
NUTRITION PROGRAMMES SUFFER
It is easier to raise funds for sudden, high-profile natural disasters like last January's earthquake in Haiti and the mid-year floods in Pakistan - although money was slow to start flowing for the latter - not least because international media attention pushes them up policy makers' agendas.
But the WFP is increasingly trying to tackle longer-term hunger among the poor and malnutrition in very young children, which leads to lifelong health issues and harms their development irreparably.
It is this kind of work that tends to suffer when funding is tight, along with the provision of food aid to people uprooted by complex conflicts in countries not judged to be geopolitically important.
For example, a huge WFP programme in Bangladesh to help pull 8 million people out of chronic hunger didn't attract as much donor support as hoped last year, pushing the country director to take tough decisions about who to take off the list.
As Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine reported last week, he received only a little more than a quarter of what he had hoped for in the past two years, leaving some communities divided and bitter about the criteria used to decide why some people got aid and their neighbours didn't.
On Thursday, the WFP announced an emergency operation to provide short-term rations to 420,000 people affected by floods in Sri Lanka. It called on donors for immediate support because funding shortfalls mean food aid for people returning home after a quarter-century conflict that ended in 2009 have already been reduced significantly since October.
It warned that its supplies of rice - the island nation's main staple food - will run out in February and all other food commodities will be exhausted by April at a time when local farms are being damaged by floodwaters.
NO FOOD PRICE CRISIS YET
Barrow said the agency is looking to raise funds of $4.4 billion for 2011 to feed 90 million to 100 million hungry in nearly 75 countries, roughly around the same number of people as in 2010. But the financial target could change depending on how humanitarian emergency situations and food prices develop through the year.
For now, the WFP is closely watching the potential for growing food needs in south Sudan, following a referendum which is likely to lead the region's secession, as well as the implications of political unrest in Ivory Coast, which has sent some 23,000 refugees fleeing into Liberia.
The agency also sees ongoing high levels of need in Haiti, where it is providing food assistance to some 2 million people as well as longer-term support to improve food security; Pakistan, where the emergency operation for some 10 million flood-affected people is due to end mid-year but assistance for conflict-displaced communities will continue; and Sudan's troubled western region of Darfur, where violence is on the rise again.
Barrow said the WFP is monitoring rising international food prices, which hit a record high last month, outstripping levels that prompted riots in poor nations in 2008 and pushed the number of chronically hungry people in the world over a billion in 2009.
In 2010, that figure eased back to 925 million, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), thanks to better economic prospects and lower food prices. But the decline could be reversed if the renewed hike in world prices feeds through to local markets.
So far, the impact has been limited in poorer nations in Africa and Asia, partly because the cost of rice has remained relatively stable.
"It would be wrong to jump to the assumption that a rise in global food prices means a crisis," Barrow said. "There are differences with 2008. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have had pretty good harvests this year, so the upward pressure on prices is not being felt as acutely."
Nonetheless, the WFP stands ready to provide additional food assistance if necessary, as the situation could change rapidly, Barrow said. And higher prices can mean less food for the hungry as more than half of WFP's supplies are purchased with cash donations.
"It's going to be a challenging year," he added.
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