15/3/2002
WFP's Focus on Women is Bertini's Impressive Legacy

Catherine Bertini, the first American woman to head a UN agency, steps down this month as Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) after ten years in the hot seat in charge of the world's largest humanitarian agency.

Her work has been widely respected - not just because of her advocacy on behalf of the world's hungry peoples or even her successful struggle to equip the agency with the technologies critical to successful operations around the world - but because she has succeeded in changing the agency's focus.

Under her direction, the Rome-based agency has moved away from simply providing food aid and instead has focused on women as the most effective means of ensuring fair food distribution. This simple shift in strategy has been critical in securing improvements in the chain of food supply.

In almost all poor societies, Catherine Bertini reasoned, it is the women who grow, prepare and serve the food; therefore forming partnerships explicitly with women to provide food aid should help them to improve their own lives and the lives of their families. Over the past ten years, wherever possible, WFP food aid has been provided as part of larger schemes to educate and train women, who are then often able to lead their families out of poverty.

"WFP's mission is to end hunger," she has said. "In households across the world, it is women who are working to do that. We must work with them. Women account for an estimated 70 percent of the 770 million poorest people in the world. To overcome poverty, you have to partner with women. Women …….can be dynamic agents of social change."

WFP says that it aims to put between 50 and 90 percent of its food under the control of women. Over 80 percent of WFP country offices organise women into food-aid committees to identify and help needy beneficiaries - a 72 percent increase since 1996.

"Focusing on women isn't just talk. They are the starting point of every project we implement," Bertini has said. "From emergencies and development to school feeding and food-for-work projects, the operational objective is to put women in charge or to use food aid to help them learn and take control of their lives."

She has tried to put the same principles into practice in the WFP's own organisation, increasing the number of female staff and placing them in key positions. In 1992, there were only six senior professional women in the agency. Today, there are 59 senior women managers and the total number of female professional staff has increased to 37 percent.

Using food aid as a component in a broader programme to help women escape poverty is a hallmark of Bertini's leadership. WFP tries to use food as a first step that ensures household food security so women can then participate in adult education classes and skills training or focus on earning a living. Perhaps the best known example of this approach are WFP's Afghan bakery projects. Against much opposition Bertini insisted that the Taliban let women work in the WFP-sponsored bakeries, earning the respect of the UN and the international community.

Thanks to her insightful leadership, WFP has also been at the forefront of promoting girls' education. In its "take-home ration" projects, the agency provides basic food items, like a sack of rice or a can of cooking oil, to families in exchange for sending their daughters to school. These rations often compensate parents for the loss of their daughters' labour and enable girls to receive an education. Even in cultures where women are often expected to remain uneducated, school attendance rates among girls have risen by up to 300 percent.

At the end of this month Catherine Bertini will leave the WFP for the last time as Executive Director, handing over the reins to another American, James Morris. She has left him an impressive legacy.