WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME (WFP) - PROGRAMME ALIMENTAIRE MONDIAL - PROGRAMA MUNDIAL DE ALIMENTOS

Ms. Catherine Bertini, Executive Director, World Food Programme (WFP)

If hunger had a face, it would be the face of a woman.

In reality, hunger has 800 million faces but most of them are the faces of women and children. Among those faces that stand out in my memory, are the face of a woman in Somalia who was struggling senselessly to nurse her hungry baby, but too weak and too malnourished to give milk; and a group of rural Indian women who were crying and pleading for a job, any job, so that they could feed their children.

At the World Food Programme (WFP), the food aid arm of the United Nations, we struggle to reach as many of the hungry as we can. We, along with our many partners in the United Nations system and NGOs feed 50 million people a year. Twenty-five million in emergencies and 25 million in development through health and nutrition projects for women and children and in food-for-work projects to strengthen the economies of developing countries. But for every hungry person we reach, there are more than a dozen that we do not. If the international community wants to reach out more to alleviate hunger we must do three things now.

First, we must place women first. We must put food directly into the hands of poor women both in emergencies and in times of peace. Why? Because women place their families first, and women are less likely to let that food be sold or diverted when it could be used to feed their children. If we carry out the commitments to women that are in this Summit's Plan of Action, then women will lead their children out of poverty and hunger. In putting women first, we must also remember that hunger is not just a symptom of poverty, it is a cause of poverty. The damage hunger inflicts on children is often irreversible. Lasting mental and physical damage leaves children incapable of working their way out of poverty as adults. Today's hunger becomes tomorrow's hunger, and there is no better way to combat this than by giving food directly to mothers.

Two, we must rebuild global food aid. Yes, the world has enough food and yes, some argue that there is no food crisis, but there is a food crisis if you are poor, and then there is a crisis every day of your life. Most of those who face this daily crisis need food aid until they can get on their feet. Just to prevent their hunger from worsening, we must triple food aid in one decade, but sadly if current donations hold, especially for development food aid, we will fall far short of that goal.

Third, we need to prepare ourselves politically to cope with emergencies. More than a million refugees are in flight in Eastern Zaire. In the eerie silence that has descended upon the empty camps, there is a message for all of us; we have not yet coped with the political dimensions of hunger and starvation. We are seeing the face of hunger in Eastern Zaire in a horrible way. With people dying every day, with bodies dotting the roadside and the nearby forests, and with no way to reach them.

An international force is now in the making, and it must move soon. The World Food Programme has food in place, the other agencies are ready to help but we need access and we already know the price if we fail, because we know that within one more month, 75 000 more people will succumb to dysentery and cholera.

We know that 50 000 more children will suffer severe malnutrition, their bellies swollen and distended and we know that more than 80 000 children under three, will die. We must act now in Eastern Zaire. And we must act now for all of the 800 million hungry poor!