Nobel Peace Prize: five things to know about the World Food Program

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The Nobel Peace Prize awarded the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) on Friday.

This powerful organization has been operating for nearly six decades in areas plagued by natural disasters or armed conflicts to provide emergency aid to populations without resources.

Every year, it feeds tens of millions of people around the world, from Yemen to North Korea.

The WFP, which presents itself as "the largest humanitarian organization in the world", shared "a moment of pride" with this Nobel Prize.

Here are five things to know about this organization, whose role is expected to be even more crucial with the coronavirus pandemic. 

Created in 1962 at the request of Dwight Eisenhower 

The WFP was created in 1962 at the request of US President Dwight Eisenhower, officially to provide the young UN with a food arm.

In reality "the WFP was born from the desire of the American government to support its national agriculture by buying back agricultural surpluses in the United States and distributing them in developing countries", explains a WFP official under the guise of l 'anonymity.

WFP is only a few months old when an earthquake hits northern Iran, killing 12.00 people.

In 1963, WFP's first school feeding project was launched and in 1965 the agency was fully integrated into the United Nations.

Aid around the world, from Yemen to Syria to the DRC 

As many as 1.1 million women and children under five receive nutritional support from WFP every month, as in Syria.

WFP is also working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria in Boko Haram-stricken states, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and South Sudan.

"The emergency response in Yemen is our largest operation in the world," WFP writes on its website.

Nearly 10 million Yemenis "are acutely food insecure," says WFP.

WFP charters the equivalent of 5,600 trucks, 30 ships and nearly 100 planes every day, often through NGOs and private carriers.

Locally, in inaccessible countries, the organization also uses donkeys.

From bags of wheat to suitcases of tickets 

The WFP has known in more than 60 years a large "sophistication" of its means of action.

While its original missions consisted, for the most part, in bringing food from point A to point B, WFP operates above all today on the basis of food, education and nutrition programs, distributing the funds collected for a optimal use, distributes vouchers or cash sums.

Its role in educating target populations about good nutrition is also essential.

"Before we gave calories, now the emphasis is on special needs, pregnant or breastfeeding women for example. This goes through local education. Malnourished children, it is both the lack of access to food but it is also prevention, with hand washing, etc ... ", explains the official.

Emergency aid, but also reconstruction and development aid for missions

WFP focuses on emergency aid, as well as reconstruction and development assistance.

Two-thirds of its work is carried out in conflict zones.

"The situations are always more complicated. There is often a confusion of roles between military and humanitarian, for example in the Sahel where NGOs are obliged to operate with military escorts", explains the UN official.

WFP works closely with two other UN agencies also based in Rome: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

WFP, which employs 17,000 people, is funded entirely by donations, most of which come from states.

It raised $ 8 billion in 2019. Without WFP "donors would go through a myriad of NGOs, which would make coordination extremely difficult," notes the agency official.

Hundreds of millions of people to rescue

More than 821 million people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger, while 135 million others experience famine or critical nutritional deficiencies, to which could be added another 130 million people as a result of the pandemic.

The number of people in acute food insecurity in the world has jumped by nearly 70% in the last four years, and the economic crisis resulting from the health crisis could lead to a "pandemic of hunger", alarms the WFP, in particular in South America, southern, central and western Africa. "We urgently need additional support from donors, who of course are already under great strain due to the impact of the pandemic in their own countries," said WFP Geneva spokesperson Thomas Phiri.