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Opening Remarks by the Executive Director WFP Executive Board

7 June, 2010 Mr President, I want to thank you for those truly epic remarks. We feel that not only did you apply your considerable diplomatic business and other experience but also your passion for the hungry – and we appreciate it. It is the type of big thinking I think we all need to have at this time of challenge. At this annual meeting of our Executive Board, I believe this is a historic moment. With your support, we stand firmly on the foundation of profound reforms and will consider at this Board new financial improvements that have made us better prepared, better positioned and better able to fulfil our core mission of saving lives and livelihoods than ever before. These changes, which I will sum up as “building smart humanitarian assistance for the 21st Century” come on the foundation of many decades of experiences and lessons learned. They come not a moment too soon in a world where there are a billion hungry people – as we have just heard from our President – and growing. The needs are urgent and great and require all of us to be able to be as effective, efficient and as united as we can be. Many of these reforms are pace-setting. WFP is taking a leadership role in three clusters helping the world streamline costs and actions across logistics, emergency food assistance and telecommunication. The strategic plan we created together presents new tools that enable us to work with markets even in emergencies. It positions us to partner with nations on their own country-led strategies and launch, for example, the first strategic planning sessions with FAO and IFAD in the face of emergencies in Haiti and Niger. This, on top of the type of financial foundation such as being the first United Nations’ agency to implement international accounting standards, makes us strong. Many of these were difficult, requiring months of consensus building, but many are pacesetting for the world. Today we stand ready to benefit from the investment of this effort with the ability to activate food security tools that help ensure that we save lives and support efforts to break the grip on crippling hunger. These tools such as local purchase, P4P, cash and vouchers, value-added processing of indigenous foods for emergencies, and programmes like food and assets for work and home-grown school feeding have recently

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been deployed across the globe. I have recently returned from Haiti where they are being deeply drawn on by the government and appreciated in one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of all time. This was all done during extremely challenging times for WFP. We have weathered the food and fuel crises, the financial crisis, the crucible of emergencies like Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, DRC, the Philippines, Somalia, and now the deep drought striking the Sahel. We have lost dear colleagues and seen our safe humanitarian space shrink in places like Pakistan and Somalia, at a time when the number of vulnerable people who depend on us has never been higher, as our President has passionately explained. Today I want to outline briefly for you how our WFP, your WFP, is better able, prepared and positioned to meet these challenges, and better prepared to fulfil our core, uncompromisable mission to save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies. It is important to note here that the battle against hunger is winnable. I look to China who was our biggest recipient just two decades ago and today is helping support efforts to beat hunger in other nations. In fact, the world cut the proportion of hunger in half from 1969 to 2004 but, as we know, those numbers are now reversing. We have the severe drought in the Sahel. Millions of people from Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Northern Nigeria and Mali are at risk and crops are being lost. All told some ten million people risk going hungry and we are stepping up operations and I know the Commissioner will talk about this as she has just returned from Niger. In Afghanistan we are scaling up in the face of increased displacement and weather challenges to reach seven million people, but using tools such as food-for-work, food-for-training and food-for-education programmes – with your support – that help break the cycle of hunger at its root. In Pakistan we are working to reach ten million people, including 2.6 million displaced in the northwest. A good harvest in 2009 allowed us to purchase wheat locally, helping to stabilize farmers whose very livelihoods were disrupted by the conflict. Sudan, as we know, has had a very tough year with drought and widespread insecurity pushing up levels of hunger, and this year assessments demonstrate that some 11 million people need food assistance, and we applaud the United States, the European Community

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and many others for standing with the hungry through these challenging times. In Yemen we have a very serious situation with the comprehensive food security survey revealing that one in three Yemenis suffer from hunger: that is 7.2 million people. And, as you know, we have crises in many other places: DRC, the Horn of Africa, continuing in Haiti with the hurricanes coming, the storm damage in Guatemala – and we express our sympathy for the loss of lives there recently – and the beginning of the lean season in Somalia, which we will talk about much more deeply later this week. I want to thank all of you who have visited during this year – including our two guests – the frontlines of these challenges. Yet the reforms you have helped us enact today ensure we can reach these needs smarter. Haiti represents the first full-fledged disaster to occur under a fully operational, smarter toolbox. WFP of course immediately activated after the earthquake struck to reach over 2.5 million people separated from food. We activated our three clusters with 50 of our global leaders arriving in Haiti just days after to become the hub of an effective, life-saving response. I was struck, arriving in Haiti just days after the earthquake, when President Preval requested that we immediately activate P4P, cash and vouchers and institutional feeding through orphanages and schools, all designed to protect fragile markets and to help Haitians return to normal life as soon as possible. Indeed I declare this year the year of programming with WFP’s programme team finding great demand for these tools and being pressed to the maximum, and I thank Valerie Guarnieri and her team for responding throughout the globe. There has been a lot of interest in Purchase for Progress because it has already demonstrated its effectiveness at saving lives and livelihoods. I think we were all inspired by the story from George McGovern when he spoke to us recently after visiting Kenya and seeing tribes that formerly were fighting, with women now coming together to aggregate their land to produce food for Purchase for Progress. These women have upped their output from 130 tons to over 1,000 in response to the P4P programme.

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Many of you may not know Administrator Shah’s background on this. In fact, we first worked together when he was the leader at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in creating the Purchasing for Progress programme. I remember our many telephone calls where he would not relent on his demand that we demonstrate that this was improving incomes for small farmers and his passion that this is the root to breaking hunger in the end. More than 20 countries have now piloted cash and voucher programmes and many are taking it to the next step by scaling up, enabling life-saving food assistance to revive economies and protect lives and livelihoods, from Haiti to Burkina Faso, from Nepal, Zambia, Zimbabwe to the occupied Palestinian territories. Let me mention nutrition. As you know we are getting better at asking the question not only is the cup full but what is in the cup? We know that a drop of vitamin A in here can prevent night blindness in the Philippines; that sensitivity to the vitamin deficiencies that are particular to East Africa can help ward off a host of problems for children, and that adding a deworming pill can make sure the children get the food, not the worms. We know now that if children under two do not receive sufficient nutrition they will be sentenced to a lifetime of mental and physical limitations. We now have what I call the burden of knowledge and WFP is looking for ways to ensure we prioritize those under twos, the most vulnerable of all in the world, during emergencies. In fact I believe the world is now at the tipping point of a nutrition revolution, one that ensures that food and other interventions are targeted and smart, not just in calories but in content. I really applaud Canada and Korea in the G8 and G20 meetings for putting nutrition front and centre, as Canada always does, and taking that now to the global level. I have also seen that public health workers, nutrition researchers, food security experts and private sector experts are very different tribes. In fact they have never talked much before. They speak different languages, they move at different paces and they have a different logic in organizing themselves. But these tribes are now meeting to ensure that we learn from each other and deploy in mutually supportive ways, and I thank David Nabarro and the Secretary-General of the United Nations for playing a coordinating role in this important effort.

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Our support to under twos has increased eightfold as we prioritize them in dangerous situations and also WFP, as you know, is proud to host here the REACH initiative by WFP, WHO, UNICEF and FAO, which will help combat child malnutrition through country-led strategies and project Laser Beam, which is being deployed in Indonesia and in Bangladesh with private sector partners such as Unilever, Kraft, DSM and GAIN. This is really a revolutionary approach to these challenges. The Board has also supported us to continue being the best at delivering, maintaining and continually improving our operational efficiency and effectiveness as one of our top priorities. The scale and importance of WFP’s work in the world today is such that on any given day there are 40 ships plying the world’s oceans with WFP food commodities, 5,000 trucks ferrying food and, as you know, when needed we use elephants, donkeys, camels and buffalo, and over 50 aircraft in the skies ferrying humanitarian workers. I think Madam Commissioner; you will have a chance to meet the Humanitarian Air Service, when you travel to Sudan just after this meeting, where it is urgently needed. We have five humanitarian response depots, the final one is set now in Malaysia, that serve up to 40 NGOs, bilateral partners and United Nations organizations, in a vision of reform managed by WFP where humanitarian goods can be deployed on site with greater speed than ever before. As the global logistics cluster lead, WFP is responsible for ensuring this well-coordinated approach and we have standby agreements with more than 18 organizations that allow this to happen. I could go through the very critical issues here but I want to just point out that we really welcome all new thinking in this area on quick ability to deploy, including the European Commission and the Commissioner’s idea for a humanitarian volunteer core and other ideas that could come forward. Let me move on to the issue of internal reforms. All of these actions have to take place on a strong internal foundation. We will discuss the Financial Framework Review – this is key for us to be able to fully align and enact the Strategic Plan. We are also doing a profound strengthening from top to bottom of our Management controls and accountability, enabled by the WINGS II project, that allows us to track commodities from your contributions until they reach the people in need – in real time – and also to track the price of food and other things in markets. Also we have the accountability structures throughout the organizations, and I thank Gina Casar and her team for spearheading

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this range of actions that are based on the top international standards and principles of internal controls. For example, we have conducted a Management review of outstanding internal audit recommendations, which has resulted in a drop in high-risk issues by half while medium-risk issues have fallen 20 percent. We anticipate getting this number down even further. As you know we were one of the first United Nations agencies to put in place a full-time Ethics Office. I am very pleased to report that we have moved ahead with speed. Prior to 2009 only five people at WFP were required to report on their financial reports and today 1,200 now do. This is a huge scale-up. No one can address the hunger problem alone. These reforms allow us to better partner with agencies, nations and governments and the private sector. Again, I think the recent strategic planning – I am looking at Laurent here from FAO – to jointly plan for the emergencies in Haiti and Niger with the governments there have been real pacesetters in this regard. It is true that the numbers of hungry keep growing and in the wake of the food, fuel and financial crises the gap between WFP’s historic pattern of reaching about 10 percent of the most vulnerable and our resourcing has grown. This gap between assessed needs and funding is being experienced by all humanitarian organizations, from OCHA to UNHCR and NGOs. I want to thank all of you because, despite serious financial pressures on the world, our traditional donors from Europe to Australia, Japan, the United States, Canada, have stood by us, prioritizing urgent hunger needs. Several nations this year have provided the highest amount to WFP ever including Brazil, Russia, Spain, Algeria, ASEAN, El Salvador, Thailand and others. We have also seen some new donors come on board such as Benin, who contributed to our operation in Haiti. Additionally, I want to thank the governments of Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, who have increased their level of funding from last year despite the economic downturn. As I mentioned, despite this profound generosity we will reach a smaller percentage of hungry than we have in our historical average. But the initiatives such as the G8 and G20, the L’Aquila comprehensive food and agricultural initiative, and the Chairman of the Africa Union’s initiative, President Mutharika from Malawi, that Africa will launch its own

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campaign to end child hunger by 2015 are all profoundly hopeful. You have our full solidarity. I want to thank donor nations that have taken their own profound reforms to ensure effective, predictable and flexible support for WFP, most recently Australia’s initiative launched by Prime Minister Rudd to provide multiyear flexible funding to WFP allowing us to better plan, preposition and work better with nations to overcome the hunger trap. Commissioner Georgieva, we welcome you to the humanitarian front lines. You have already gone to listen and learn in Niger and I know you leave shortly for Sudan. We thank the European Commission for pledging a crucial amount of emergency support and also in the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative and the European Commission food facility to further tackle food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition. The two new policy frameworks of the European Union that the European Commission adopted to help developing countries address the issue of food security both in emergency and long-term situation are innovative and bold, and we thank ECHO for its generous support for emergency operations across the board: Haiti, Niger, Chad and beyond. We also applaud your major initiative in Sudan, which I am sure you will talk about. In addition, a special thanks to the European Union and other NATO members for Operation Atalanta launched in 2008 where seven escort ships are helping to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach hungry people in Somalia. It has helped 61 vessels get through. Administrator Shah was already a global leader in food security and nutrition when he took office, as I mentioned, and as Under-Secretary at the United States Department of Agriculture. I commend you, Administrator Shah, and President Obama, for making food security the President’s first global initiative, and the entire Administration and Congress for their leadership in the battle against hunger and for understanding that hunger is in fact a peace and security issue. I noted the new United States national security strategy mentions food security no fewer than seven times. Secretary Clinton’s personal leadership in the new “Feed the Future” food security initiative demonstrates the backing you have, Administrator Shah, at the highest levels. New partnerships are emerging throughout the world. I would just like to mention a few: in Africa the critical partnership we have with the African Union, the Regional Economic Commissions, and CAADP to support their efforts are critical. We have with us this week the Minister of

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Agriculture from Sierra Leone, Dr Sam Sesay. We are happy that you are joining us. Sierra Leone was one of the first countries to sign a Compact for Comprehensive Agricultural Development Programme in Africa and they have translated this into a bold programme, and WFP is buying from smallholders this year, more than 2,000 small farmers in Sierra Leone. I just want to mention briefly two very hopeful trips I have had recently. I visited Moscow in March, meeting with the first Deputy Prime Minister Zubkov, Foreign Minister Lavrov, the Agricultural Minister and Minister of Emergencies; their emissary Vladimir Chernigov will be with us this week. We saw a remarkable commitment to helping lead the battle against hunger in particular in Central Asia, Armenia and other nations, and saw a remarkable school meal programme in Yaroslavl, and we look forward and thank our former Board President, Mr Kuznetsov for his leadership. Just one last thing to mention. No nation on earth is beating hunger faster today than Brazil. Brazil’s Fome Zero feeding programme and the Bolsa Família cash programme is helping ensure that Brazilians get three meals a day and they are linking it to school attendance and purchasing from local farmers in the most innovative programme I have seen. I have just returned from meeting with President Lula, and visiting with the farmers and the schools. We have launched an initiative to take the best practices from Brazil’s experience and to share those with best practices throughout Africa and elsewhere. We want to thank Spain for partnering with Brazil to ensure new leadership in fighting hunger in Central America, Caribbean and Africa. Let me conclude by saying with your support we are there to help when disaster strikes and to help nations prepare for and respond to disasters before they hit. We have seen in the case of Haiti that global citizens will not tolerate people dying from hunger and the push for effective action has never been higher. We will be there and be the best we can be. We also want to thank you. We know it is a time of tremendous pressures on budgets and we have noted that many of you – and I am looking particularly at Sweden and many of the Nordic nations who have been such profound contributors, not only to WFP but the entire development aid, and really prioritizing and ensuring that hunger needs do not go unaddressed during this terrible time.

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We are profoundly lucky and honoured to have two of our outstanding partners here today. In fact two partners that represent the bulk of aid and emergency aid to the world and it is our honour to have you and to hear from you this morning.