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UN's WFP Calls for More Aid Without Ties
By Emma Ross-Thomas
Reuters
July 10, 2005Food aid would be more effective if governments stopped tying their donations to countries where they have political interests or to high-profile emergencies, the head of the World Food Programme said on Sunday. Seventy to 80 percent of aid pledged to the United Nations' World Food Programme comes with instructions as to where it must be spent, WFP Executive Director James Morris said.
"More and more of the support we have is pretty well defined and restricted ... We have less flexibility than once was the case," Morris told Reuters. He said political interests increasingly informed governments' decisions on where to send aid, leaving some countries severely under-funded. "Countries have all sorts of traditional geographic interests, political interests. There are all sorts of reasons why people do things," Morris said.
He said giving the WFP a freer hand would allow more of those most in need to be fed. Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Canada are already large contributors of aid without restrictions. "If you're interested in getting food to people who need it the most, getting it there quickest, and being certain that there is no political agenda whatsoever ... the multilateral system is a very powerful way to do your work," said Morris, who is visiting Spain for talks with the government.
The WFP fed 113 million people in 80 countries last year with its main donations coming from governments, which Morris said tended to chose high-profile emergencies over lesser known or chronic suffering. Relief efforts for the tsunami disaster -- which killed 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean -- and for the African region of Darfur, where 2 million people have been driven from their homes by conflict, were well funded because of intense media coverage. But that came at others' expense. "Ninety percent of the people who die of hunger and malnutrition don't die in a high profile situation," he said.
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