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The World Food Programme (WFP) is the frontline United Nations organisation fighting to eradicate world hunger. WFP became operational in 1963 and is now the world's largest international food aid organisation.

The vision of WFP is a world in which every man, woman and child has access at all times to the food needed for an active and healthy life. Without food, there can be no sustainable peace, no democracy and no development.

WFP has emergency and development projects in 80 countries worldwide and a staff of more than 5,000. During the past three decades, WFP has invested about US$24 billion and more than 43 million tons of food to combat hunger throughout the world. Of this, over 40 percent went to sub-Saharan Africa, almost 30 per cent to South and East Asia, and approximately 14 per cent to North Africa and the Middle East, 8 per cent to Latin America and the Caribbean, and 5 per cent to Europe and the CIS.

WFP also uses food aid as a catalyst in development activities that promote self-reliance among those who are often bypassed by more mainstream development. WFP food aid is provided primarily to least developed and low-income, food-deficit countries and according to Catherine Bertini, WFP Executive Director, focuses mainly on the most vulnerable members of society - women, children and the elderly.

The WFP works though 3 main channels. First, Food-for-Life provides fast, efficient, life-sustaining relief to people caught up in humanitarian crises. Food-For-Growth programmes target vulnerable people at the most critical times of their lives -babies, schoolchildren, pregnant and breast-feeding women and the elderly. Food aid is used as 'preventative medicine' - to ensure future healthy development. Finally Food-For-Work programmes aim to help the hungry poor become self-reliant and build assets. Workers are paid with food to build roads or ports in Ghana and Lesotho, repair dykes in Bangladesh, terrace hillsides in China or Guatemala, replant forests in Ethiopia, or repair irrigation canals in Somalia. In its development work, WFP gives priority to disaster prevention, emergency preparedness and mitigation, and post-disaster rehabilitation.

A decade ago, two out of three tons of the food aid provided by WFP was used for helping people become self-reliant. Today, that picture is reversed; 80 percent of WFP resources are used for victims of man-made disasters.

The WFP is funded through voluntary donations and its budget is based on performance, linked to the tonnage of food it moves. Contributions - either in cash, commodities or services -- to WFP come from donor nations, inter-governmental bodies such as the European Union, corporations and individuals. WFP has the smallest headquarters staff and the lowest percentage of budget devoted to administration (averaging only 9 per cent) of any UN agency.

WFP is the UN's largest supporter of development projects involving and benefiting poor women; the largest provider of grant assistance for environmental protection and improvement; and the largest purchaser of food and services in developing countries and, thus, the major supporter of South-South trade. The WFP website is at http://www.wfp.org

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