House of Commons - International Development

Select Committee on International Development Tenth Report

2 The WFP—origins and transformation

From food surplus to food assistance

15. The WFP was established in 1962 as an agency distributing surplus food supplies to development projects such as supplementary feeding for mothers and children. The use of food not just as emergency assistance but as a tool to promote economic development had been trialled through the post-Second World War Marshall Plan for the rehabilitation of European economies.[27] The surplus food that was accumulating in the USA and Europe by 1960 led the UN General Assembly to decide to establish a distribution agency for surplus supplies. Twenty years later, by the early 1980s, WFP operations were well-established and extended across 114 countries.

16. Since the 1980s the agency has gradually shifted its operations towards providing emergency food aid rather than simply supplying surplus food to schools and communities. Many aid agencies believed that the food aid delivered in the 1960s and 1970s may have provided a temporary relief from hunger but did not facilitate durable hunger reduction. Moreover, many believed the distribution of food surpluses to have had negative short-term side effects, such as harming local farmer livelihoods.[28] Agencies also pointed to a lack of strong evidence on the positive impact of the use of food aid in development. The thinking has now moved towards giving emergency food assistance, with development gains—such as improving child nutrition or incentivising school attendance—as a by-product.[29]

17. In the 21^st century, the WFP describes itself as a "pipeline" that delivers emergency food—and, increasingly, cash—to areas of need, with the "last mile" of micro-level distribution handled by the agency's huge network of over 3,000 partners (non-governmental organisations including the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement).[30] The WFP's reach into remote areas is extensive, and often critical given that the agency is the only development actor in particular locations. It is often responsible for supplying the infrastructure to reach rural communities: road-building, storage, air transportation and truck-driving are just some of the many services the agency operates. The WFP also manages the UN's Humanitarian Response Depots (UNHRD). During our visit to Ghana in March 2008, we visited the UNHRD hub for emergency supplies in Africa. This is one of five regional hubs that respond to emergencies and support other humanitarian organisations in their responses.

RESPONDING TO THE 'NEW FACE' OF HUNGER

Urban hunger

18. The WFP is having to adapt quickly to a changing global context of food assistance. Soaring food prices in 2007-08 is one aspect of this: the (linked) rise in fuel prices is another. These and other causes of this current crisis will be examined in Chapter 3. The current food crisis is said to be characterised by a "new face of hunger": an increased—and increasingly urban—number of people who will enter the category of acute hunger because rising food prices mean they can no longer afford basic foodstuffs. Historically, the WFP's operations have focused more on feeding the rural poor than people living in urban situations.[31] So assisting urban populations who now cannot afford the food on the shelves of shops and markets represents a new challenge for the agency. The number of people living in these centres is also expanding due to the process of urbanisation. 2007 marked the point at which for the first time more of the world's citizens were living in urban than rural areas. With increasing numbers of people living in cities, there are likely to be fewer food producers contributing to supply and more food purchases taking place. This cycle, unless broken, is likely to perpetuate the rising cost of food and push more people living in urban contexts, and especially slum areas, into hunger.

The poorest communities

19. Over the course of the inquiry, we heard how people living on the poverty line—in both rural and urban areas—are being pushed back into poverty by food price rises. Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the WFP, told us, "There is a whole new group of people who would not have been identified even six months ago as acutely hungry [now] requiring an urgent intervention."[32] Poor people typically spend a high proportion of their incomes on food purchases, often 50-80%.[33] The WFP told us that food prices have at least doubled since June 2007; for people living on a dollar a day, this is likely to impose catastrophic constraints on their purchasing power.[34] As UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has commented:

"Inevitably it is the bottom billion who are hit hardest: people living on one dollar a day or less. When people are that poor and inflation erodes their meagre earnings, they generally do one of two things: they buy less food, or they buy cheaper, less nutritious food. The result is the same—more hunger and less chance of a healthy future."[35]

SOCIAL PROTECTION

20. The WFP told us that it has begun a process of adaptation to the "new face of hunger", as set out in its new four-year Strategic Plan (launched on 13 June 2008). This involves becoming a more flexible agency, assisted by the fact that the proportion of the WFP's budget supplied as cash, rather than 'in-kind' as food, has recently increased and now stands at 50%.[36] This increases the scope for flexibility in tailoring different responses to different situations. As Josette Sheeran told us, in contexts with ongoing problems with food availability and access or famine such as Darfur, it is supplying food that is important: cash is no use if markets are empty of food. However, in situations where food is available—for instance, in Mozambique following the 2007 floods—cash transfers to vulnerable people can be a very effective way of meeting their needs, whilst also supporting local farmers and markets.[37] These food and cash transfers are a form of social protection: they provide targeted or universal support to eligible poor or vulnerable households.

21. Ms Sheeran admitted that transfers were a new approach for the WFP and that it would take time to develop the appropriate modes of deployment:

"We are asking our Boards for a more flexible toolbox where we could consider targeted vouchers, of which we have limited but some successful experiences [...] We need to be able to develop the programmatic strength to be able to deploy that toolbox as needed."[38]

The WFP also told us they were aware that cash programmes were likely to take months to establish properly, and that in the meantime they were working urgently to monitor existing cash transfer schemes and determine which of these could be scaled up.[39]

22. Gareth Thomas MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, was supportive of the use of transfers. He told us that there was increasing evidence to suggest that these transfers of cash—also known as 'safety nets'—provided an effective way to prevent hunger, especially in ongoing famine situations where the resilience of vulnerable communities needed to be built up over time.[40]

23. For example, in Ethiopia DFID has supported the Productive Safety Net Programme, which was set up in 2005 with other donors including the World Bank, European Commission, USA, Canada, Ireland, Sweden and the WFP. The Programme aims to provide poor households with enough cash and/or food income to meet their immediate needs and thereby avoid household assets such as cattle being sold to buy food. Up to 7.2 million people who previously depended on emergency support have been reached.[41] During our visit to Ethiopia in February 2007, we heard from a number of sources of the significant impact the programme was having on the lives of the poorest people. Research suggests that three-quarters of households surveyed under the Programme were consuming more and better quality food; and that three in five people who had received money through social protection schemes were not having to sell assets to get them through particular food shortages.[42] In March 2008 DFID approved an additional payment of £23 million for the first phase of the Programme, increasing the UK's total contribution to £93 million since 2005.[43] Annual DFID funding will now rise to £30 million per annum.[44]

24. However, critics of social protection schemes say that if donors, rather than governments, provide cash or food directly to citizens, lines of state accountability can suffer. Alex Evans from New York University's Center on International Cooperation told us that it was too soon to see social protection schemes as a panacea to food price rises: "Better answers are needed to questions about the potential inflationary impact of some social protection measures, the best combination of cash and in-kind transfers, what kind of targeting and conditionality works best and so on."[45]

25. We are gravely concerned that millions of people are being pushed into acute hunger by rising food prices. We recognise that it is the poorest of the poor, those living on a dollar a day or less, who are being hit the hardest. We welcome the WFP's broadening of its activities from food aid alone to food assistance, and its associated increasing use of cash and food transfer schemes. These social protection schemes offer a flexible and effective approach to building up vulnerable communities' resilience to food insecurity over time. We encourage DFID and the WFP to continue to evaluate the different elements within social protection packages—the right balance of cash and food and the best techniques for targeting transfers—to ensure that an optimal package can be provided. We commend DFID's decision to increase its funding for the Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethiopia to £30 million per year. We encourage both DFID and the WFP to explore options for replicating lessons from the Ethiopian scheme elsewhere.

'IN-KIND' FOOD DONATIONS

26. The expanding use of cash rather than food has reinvigorated the debate about the practice of giving 'in-kind' donations to the WFP.[46] The WFP has been engaged in a process of seeking to increase its use of local procurement in developing countries, which assists in boosting agriculture and livelihoods in these source countries.[47] 80% of its cash budget is now spent locally in the developing world, a 30% increase over 2006.[48] However the USA, the WFP's largest donor, still gives nearly all its donations in kind as food.[49] The food donations are US-produced and shipped in US vessels. Receiving donations in this form, from the USA and from other donors who continue the practice, restricts not only the WFP's ability to give assistance in the form of cash, but its capacity to procure food supplies locally.[50]

27. The USA reportedly told the WFP that it is facing a 40% increase in food commodity prices compared with 2007, and will hence "radically cut" the amount it gives away.[51] The rapid rise in commodity prices has put huge strain on the purchasing power of both food agencies such as the WFP and poor people globally. We believe that it would be of deep concern if the USA were to follow up on suggestions that it might reduce the amount of aid it provides to the WFP because of rising prices and costs. We also believe that the USA should review its practice of giving nearly all its support 'in-kind' as food, given that cash donations are of much more value to the WFP than food donations in developing the flexible "toolbox" that it now requires.

The WFP as a humanitarian actor

28. The WFP plays a central role in running the UN's food assistance operation in crises worldwide. The WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency with a work programme of US$5.4 billion over 2008 and 2009 covering 162 operations in 78 countries.[52] Under the UN inter-agency cluster approach to humanitarian emergencies, introduced in 2005 as part of the Humanitarian Reform Agenda, the WFP leads the logistics cluster. It also participates in the nutrition, protection and early recovery clusters, and is the global food aid sector lead.[53]

29. The WFP works in a wide range of humanitarian crisis situations resulting from conflict (for instance, Darfur), natural disasters (such as Burma post-Cyclone Nargis) and economic hardship (for instance, Ethiopia). There has been a high incidence of extreme weather events in recent years: Josette Sheeran told us that today the WFP is responding to four times the number of natural disasters than it did in the 1980s.[54] In 2006, the agency reached 63.4 million people caught up in humanitarian disasters and in 2008 they hope to reach 73 million.[55]

30. By operating in these contexts, the WFP can reach remote and isolated populations which other agencies cannot. However, in doing so WFP staff have increasingly faced dangerous situations. For example, seven WFP staff have been killed in Sudan since September 2007.[56] In May 2008, the head of the WFP's office in north-western Kenya, a major relief hub for southern Sudan, was killed by gunmen. In June 2008, gunmen in southern Somalia shot and killed a WFP-contracted truck driver, the third WFP driver to die this year. A number of ships have been attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia (80% of WFP food for Somalia arrives by sea). The WFP has said this entire supply route is under threat unless a replacement is found for the Dutch navy frigate that had been providing escort services until the end of June 2008.[57] Yet the presence of the WFP in such countries is crucial: experts fear the number of people requiring food assistance in Somalia this year could reach 3.5 million people—nearly half the country's population.[58]

31. The Minister was very supportive of the WFP's emergency work and told us that the WFP was an effective cluster lead for logistics.[59] Oxfam noted the WFP's "strong and effective relationship" with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).[60] Alex Evans of New York University said that "much remains to be done" in terms of strengthening the coherence of the global humanitarian system and that the WFP has "much to contribute here."[61] The WFP's collaboration with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is particularly important during emergencies as OCHA oversees the cluster system and the overall response. Supporting OCHA to fulfil its leadership role on emergency action is an important role for the WFP.[62] We will look in depth at the relationship between the WFP and other UN agencies in Chapter 4.

32. The WFP deserves credit for its role at the centre of the UN's response to humanitarian emergencies, including its leadership of the global food aid sector and the logistics cluster. We acknowledge the difficult and often dangerous job that WFP employees do in difficult environments, especially conflict-prone and conflict-affected states. Priority must be given to ensuring coherence with other UN agencies in line with the 2005 Humanitarian Reform Agenda. The WFP should continue to support the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in its role in overseeing the co-ordination of emergency responses.

DARFUR AND SOUTHERN SUDAN

33. The WFP's largest operation has, for the last four years, been in Darfur and southern Sudan: currently more than a quarter of the WFP's resources are concentrated in these two areas and five million people are fed there each day.[63] The WFP described its work in internal displacement camps and villages in conflict-riven Darfur as "the difference between life and death", particularly during the peak of the hunger season.[64] In southern Sudan, the WFP manages a US$250 million road-building programme. It is hoped that this will provide easier access for the WFP as well as helping restart local markets and the private sector.[65] Given that southern Sudan is now relatively peaceful, the WFP is implementing a transition arrangement with a view to the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) soon being able to meet people's needs themselves. For example, consideration is being given to transferring the road-building programme to the GOSS's transport ministry, and school feeding is being integrated into national education programmes.[66] The Sudan Recovery Fund, to which the UK has pledged £70 million over the next few years, is helping to fund this handover process.

COMMON HUMANITARIAN FUNDS (CHF)

34. £123 million of UK aid funds were spent in Darfur and southern Sudan in 2007-08 of which £9.7 million (8%) was spent on food security. The food security expenditure was split between the Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) in Sudan and DFID Sudan's NGO bilateral programme.[67] The level of DFID's support to pooled international funds for humanitarian response such as the CHF is increasing in parallel with a decreasing level of direct funding to the WFP itself.[68] CHFs are being piloted in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and will be introduced in the Central African Republic and Ethiopia during 2008.[69] DFID believes that common funds allow the UN Emergency Relief and Resident Humanitarian Coordinators on the ground "to allocate funding to agencies best placed to respond to humanitarian need."[70]

35. DFID monitors the expenditure of its funds in Sudan using its direct relationships with UN agencies (including the WFP) and the NGOs it supports. The Minister told us, "We have a series of opportunities to road test and evaluate the effectiveness of their own internal systems for making sure money gets to where it is supposed to get to."[71] He was clear that the WFP's work had been of critical importance in Darfur and southern Sudan, saying "They are keeping people alive who would not otherwise be alive."[72] We believe the WFP deserves credit for its ongoing lifesaving work in Darfur and southern Sudan. We were particularly pleased to hear that conditions are improving sufficiently in southern Sudan to allow key WFP programmes such as road-building and school feeding to be handed over to the government. We welcome DFID's funding of the Sudan Recovery Fund and the contribution this will make to the transition process. We believe DFID's increased contributions to pooled international emergency funds such as the Common Humanitarian Funds (CHFs) in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are an effective way of helping ensure a coherent UN approach in crisis situations such as Darfur.

ZIMBABWE

36. A growing hunger crisis has been developing in Zimbabwe for some time. The WFP feeds about 2.4 million Zimbabweans annually—usually prior to the country's May harvests. Yet this year, the WFP has warned that an estimated two million people will go hungry during the summer of 2008, potentially rising to more than five million (almost half of the population) by January 2009. Long-term food insecurity in the country has worsened significantly over the course of President Robert Mugabe's rule, due to: the impact of land seizures; recurring poor harvests of maize and wheat; persistent droughts; the impact of HIV on the farming community; and rocketing economic inflation. This grim situation is at risk of deteriorating further due to the suspension of food aid by Mugabe's government in June 2008.[73] It ordered aid groups and NGOs to suspend field work indefinitely, accusing them of conspiring with the opposition party to topple Mugabe in the delayed presidential run-off election of 27 June.[74] The ban has accompanied a wave of violence and intimidation by pro-government militias.

37. Much of the UN's aid to Zimbabwe is channelled through NGOs. The WFP has said that the government order is likely to halt the food distributions carried out on its behalf.[75] UN OCHA estimates that around 1.5 million people are currently being affected by the suspension of NGO activity: if the ban continues into July and August this number will rise.[76] As well as food aid, the ban will hamper the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs to the 15% of Zimbabwean adults who are HIV-positive. On 3 July, DFID announced £9 million funding in support of the WFP's work in Zimbabwe. The Secretary of State called on the Zimbabwean Government to lift the ban on food aid and said if it continued the WFP would implement contingency plans to ensure the food aid is effectively distributed.[77] As Josette Sheeran told us, in relation to the many conflict areas in which the WFP works, "It is unacceptable to use food as a weapon; it is unacceptable to politicise food; it is unacceptable to block access to food for those who are cut off against their will from the basic access and ability to feed their families."[78]

38. We are deeply concerned about the hunger crisis in Zimbabwe. The ban on food aid imposed by Robert Mugabe's government in June 2008 will halt or hamper delivery of vital WFP supplies to millions of people. The disastrous state of Zimbabwe's economy and agricultural sector is likely to leave innocent citizens without any source of food and condemn many to starvation. We urge the UK Government to continue to press for the food aid ban to be revoked as soon as possible so that the Zimbabwean people can receive the humanitarian assistance they so desperately need.

Hunger and malnutrition

THE WFP'S WIDER 'ENABLING DEVELOPMENT' ACTIVITIES

39. As well as working in emergency situations, the WFP also supports what it calls wider 'Enabling Development' activities such as school feeding and nutrition. Many of these activities endure from 'food aid' activities the WFP carried out in the 1960s and 1970s before the shift towards emergency food assistance. Eighty per cent of the agency's efforts are now concentrated on emergency work leaving only 20% of its programme focused on these wider development activities.[79]

40. The development work sustained by the WFP produces some positive results. Twenty million children were fed in schools in 2006 due to the WFP: a majority of schools assisted reported an improvement in pupils' classroom behaviour and attention span.[80] The WFP also runs mother and child health and nutrition programmes, for instance by providing fortified foods that deliver essential micronutrients. Successful schemes include a pilot project in a refugee camp in Zambia where local mobile mills provide fortified cereals and which led to height and weight improvements in refugee children, and a reduction by half of anaemia and vitamin A deficiency.[81] However, a 2005 evaluation of the WFP's Enabling Development activities found mixed results, particularly in regard to health-related outcomes.[82]

41. Donor funding for the WFP's non-emergency food aid activities has been on a declining trend. DFID states:

"The UK does not support WFP's non-emergency food aid activities. This is partly because of concern over the appropriateness and effectiveness of these interventions, and partly because DFID delivers its support to health and education through budget support, sector programmes or global funds."[83]

The Minister was clear that DFID believes the WFP's emergency work to be more important than its wider development work.[84] He said, "Our sense is that WFP has got a particular leadership role to play on responding to the immediate humanitarian needs, as opposed to developmental needs."[85] DFID's preference is for activities such as school feeding to be built into longer-term education programmes rather than carried out by the WFP.[86] The Department says that focusing more narrowly on emergency work would imply the need for "careful reconsideration of the organisation's role in the more general provision of food transfers such as school feeding or food-for-work."[87]

42. Lawrence Haddad of the Institute of Development Studies thought that the WFP's development work was a crucial part of its portfolio and that it would be inefficient to disconnect the linkages between development and emergency work:

"The institutional, professional and financial boundaries between emergency and relief—constructed in the mid 70s—need to be torn down. It is clear that development actions which proceed as if risk is an infrequent visitor will only lead to more risk, and that emergency work that is not cognizant of the road map it is inadvertently laying down for development will not necessarily generate good enough development pathways. If it were allowed to, WFP could be playing a greater preventative and developmental role than it is now."[88]

Josette Sheeran highlighted that responses to the current food crisis need to be developmental as well as emergency-focused, so that the resilience of communities to hunger can be built up and the agricultural sector strengthened.[89]

NUTRITION

43. One particular issue that convinced us of the need for the WFP to continue with development, as well as emergency, work is that of nutrition. Ensuring that food is not only available but is nutritious is central to the achievement of the MDGs. As the International Food Policy Research Institute has said, malnutrition reduces people's ability to learn, work, and care for themselves and their family members.[90] Studies on nutrition show that countries that do not invest in nutrition sustain financial losses in terms of people's wages, with a direct negative impact on GDP.[91] Yet food aid is often deployed on the basis of meeting people's minimum calorie requirements, rather than providing nutrition, especially in emergency situations.[92]

44. A quarter of all children in the world are malnourished.[93] Early malnutrition can cause recurring problems throughout a child's lifetime. There is a "golden interval" for nutrition: from pregnancy to two years of age. After this, under-nutrition will have caused irreversible damage for future development towards adulthood. Children who fail to receive the right nutrients suffer symptoms such as stunted growth and severe wasting. Vitamin A, zinc, iron and iodine deficiencies are the major global priorities. Vitamin A deficiency is associated with more than half a million deaths of children under-five globally each year.[94]

45. Four-fifths of under-nourished children live in just 20 countries.[95] Many of these countries are in Africa, but the highest share, 45%, of malnourished children, is found in South Asia.[96] Malnutrition increases dramatically, and kills most rapidly, in emergencies, but it is a feature of everyday life for millions of children: in the poorest parts of Tanzania, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Burma, Save the Children found that up to 80% of households are too poor to feed their children a healthy diet.[97]

46. Malnutrition accounts for one-third of child deaths.[98] Yet historically nutrition has been neglected by donors. Only $250 million is spent on nutrition aid globally, compared with the $3 billion spent on HIV/AIDS.[99] Whilst HIV/AIDS led to 380,000 child deaths in 2006, malnutrition is responsible for 1.5-2.5 million children dying annually.[100] A recent series on under-nutrition in The Lancet called the global nutrition system "fragmented and dysfunctional".[101] Save the Children said their own experience bore this out, citing "a myriad of international actors with overlapping remits but none with the key purpose of ensuring the efficacy of international donors, development organisations and governments in reducing malnutrition."[102]

47. We visited the malnutrition ward of the Princess Marie Louise Children's Hospital in central Accra. Here, children with severe malnutrition are treated free of charge. The Hospital also provided vitamin A supplements to all children, with positive effects. Ghana has made significant progress in reducing the incidence of hunger and malnutrition over a number of years and the WFP is in the process of closing down most of its operations there. However, in 2007 malnutrition accounted for only 2.6% of admissions to this hospital but was responsible for 13.2% of deaths. This points to the importance of early interventions in preventing deaths.

DFID and nutrition

48. Save the Children were critical of DFID's own prioritisation of nutrition. Research commissioned by the NGO in 2007 from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) found that DFID had no identifiable nutrition strategy, no internal nutrition champion and that it does not measure the direct nutritional impact of its work.[103]

49. Chronic malnutrition interventions and policies are often classified as "direct" and "indirect". Direct interventions focus on immediate responses that can improve the quality of individual food intake, such as: growth monitoring and promotion; micronutrient supplementation; targeted food aid; treatment of malnutrition; behaviour change; and support to breastfeeding. Indirect approaches support wider improvements such as food availability, access to clean water and proper sanitation, improved education and economic growth.[104] The IDS research rated the UK more highly (fourth out of 11 donors) for its indirect than its direct (sixth out of 11) bilateral investment in nutrition interventions.[105]

50. Save the Children told us that "we have no assurances that indirect investments will impact on child nutrition."[106] Whilst indirect approaches clearly make a contribution to improved nutrition, direct approaches are very much needed to provide targeted, immediate responses to malnutrition. When we questioned the Minister about this, he accepted that "we could give higher profile to the work on nutrition" and told us that he had set up a policy team on nutrition.[107]

51. We believe that DFID does not give nutrition the attention or resources it deserves. Malnutrition kills up to 2.5 million children a year—around five times more than the number of children dying from HIV/AIDS. The effects of malnutrition in children under two years old endure throughout their lives. Malnutrition is easily passed on to the next generation by expectant mothers who are malnourished. Yet it is entirely preventable, and often at very little cost. The fact that DFID does not have a nutrition policy, even if it does now have a policy team, is not satisfactory. Indirect policies focusing on wider sectoral approaches to health and social development make a necessary but insufficient contribution to combating child malnutrition. We recommend that DFID adopt more direct policies to combat malnutrition and give greater support to proven interventions such as support to breastfeeding and micronutrient supplementation.

Hunger, malnutrition and the MDGs

52. A further concern is that DFID has no measurable target in place for nutrition. DFID's progress on its objectives and targets is measured against its Public Service Agreement (PSA) and monitored by HM Treasury. Neither the 2005-08 PSA nor the 2008-11 PSA include an indicator on nutrition. This is a key omission. The PSAs are built around the MDG targets (see Box 1). MDG 1, as we described earlier, has three targets: firstly, to reduce by half the number of people living on a dollar a day; secondly, to achieve full employment; and thirdly to reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Yet as Box 1 shows, DFID chooses to measure the achievement of MDG 1 simply by the first target, poverty reduction.[108] Nor do any of the other MDGs have a specific hunger or nutrition target (for instance, MDG 4 seeking to reduce child mortality). The logical corollary of this is that DFID believes hunger can be solved through wider poverty reduction: that poverty strategies will translate directly into a reduction in hunger and malnutrition. As we have already made clear, this indirect approach is a risky strategy. As

Josette Sheeran told us, "Food security is not necessarily a natural outgrowth of economic growth and development. It actually requires separate strategies."[109]

53. We are very concerned that DFID does not have a measurable target for malnutrition. The Department's decision to measure progress towards MDG 1 using a poverty indicator alone, rather than including indicators for hunger and nutrition, implies it believes that wider poverty reduction strategies are sufficient tools with which to combat hunger and nutrition. This is far from proven. We recommend that DFID add a new indicator under MDG 1 in the 2008-11 PSA to enable its work on nutrition and hunger to be properly targeted and measured.

BOX 1: PSA 29 TARGETS AND INDICATORS 2008-11

MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Indicator: Proportion of population below $1 (purchasing power parity) per day

MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education

Indicator: Net enrolment ratio in primary education

MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Indicator: Ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education

MDG 4: Reduce child mortality

Indicator: Under-five mortality rate

MDG 5: Improve maternal health

Indicator: Maternal mortality ratio

MDG 6: Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Indicator: HIV prevalence among 15-49 year people

MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Indicator: Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source

MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development

Indicator: Value (in nominal terms), and proportion admitted free of duties, of developed country imports (excluding arms and oil) from low income countries

The WFP and nutrition

54. The WFP works in a number of ways to include nutrition interventions in its operations. Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the WFP, told us that this was a critical part of the WFP's work. She explained that adding a drop of vitamin A to a school feeding cup costs just two US cents but makes the difference in meeting a child's nutritional needs.[110] She said the WFP was "very busily" looking at all its interventions to see how nutritional impacts could be incorporated.[111] Nutrition falls under the agency's strategic objective of reducing chronic hunger and under-nutrition, with the main tools to achieve this listed as: mother-and-child health and nutrition programmes; school feeding programmes; programmes addressing and mitigating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other pandemics; and policy and programmatic advice (see Paragraph 40 above).[112]

55. Josette Sheeran emphasised to us that nutrition very much required a team effort across the UN.[113] The WFP's main partner on nutrition is UNICEF. The agencies work together at three levels:

general food distribution by the WFP;
targeted food aid in humanitarian emergencies (focused on pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under five);
medical responses for severe cases of malnutrition, for instance therapeutic feeding used in cases such as marasmus, where the child is severely emaciated, and kwashiorkor, where the child has dangerous swelling of the face, feet and limbs due to lack of protein.[114]

56. Responsibility for nutrition is currently fragmented across the UN with no obvious institutional home although it is supposedly co-ordinated by the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition. A recent article in The Lancet said there are at least 14 UN agencies working on nutrition, including the WFP, UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the FAO and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).[115] As Save the Children highlighted in their evidence, the WFP mainly focuses on the symptomatic relief of hunger, rather than the root causes of malnutrition.[116] DFID and other donors have given nutrition insufficient priority. It is fragmented across different UN bodies, with no agency taking overall responsibility. We believe that it is therefore vitally important for the WFP to continue its nutrition activities. A huge opportunity exists at the point of delivery of food aid: adding micronutrient supplements and working with breastfeeding mothers are just two examples of the essential nutritional interventions that the WFP factors into its work. As an agency working at the point of delivery in humanitarian emergencies, it is essential for the WFP to raise its profile as a major implementation agency for nutrition-focused work.

57. We were surprised that DFID was not more supportive of the wider development activities undertaken by the WFP, of which nutrition is one. Long-term development work such as nutrition and agricultural development builds the foundations for communities' survival in emergency situations. Failing to use the interface between development and emergency work is a missed opportunity as well as an inefficient use of resources. We recommend that DFID expand its funding for the WFP to include the agency's essential development work, especially on nutrition which is currently under-funded and under-emphasised by the international community and the UN system.

27 James Ingram, 'Bread and Stones: Leadership and the struggle to reform the United Nations World Food Programme' (South Carolina: BookSurge, 2006), p.11 Back

28 Ev 69 Back

29 Ev 68 Back

30 Q 26 Back

31 Q 77 Back

32 Q 10 Back

33 Ev 49 Back

34 Ev 86 Back

35 Ev 87 Back

36 Q 11 Back

37 Q 11 Back

38 Q 11. The 'toolbox' referred to by Josette Sheeran refers to the flexible range of approaches, interventions and resources needed by the WFP in order to respond to the changing global context of food security. Back