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WFP
WFP
Mandate and operations
The World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian organization, works towards achieving zero hunger by 2030. WFP has a dual mandate of “Saving Lives and Changing Lives”, meaning it works both in emergency preparedness and response, and in sustainable development and resilience projects, providing assistance to more than 97 million people across 88 countries in 2020.
WFP delivers food, cash and other assistance modalities to help countries counter the rippling impacts of emergencies and COVID-19 socio-economic shocks. In 2020, WFP tackled crises in 16 countries or regions, mostly fuelled by conflict. At the same time, WFP focuses on sustainable development, promoting long-term change by working in partnership with national governments and communities.
In addition to the above, WFP leads the Logistics Cluster, co-leads the Food Security Cluster with FAO, and manages both the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) and the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD). Finally, it also provides logistics and supply chain services to the humanitarian community.
The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to WFP "for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.".
WFP is entirely funded by donations from governments, companies and private individuals.
Standby Partnerships programme
Standby Arrangements are an effective example of the power of leveraging partnerships to support emergency response, to impact humanitarian action and to achieve greater results. The first Standby Partnership Agreements (SBA) were signed by WFP in 1996. As of July 2021, WFP has active SBAs with a total of 27 standby partners.
These are entities of very different kind, ranging from Governmental agencies, to NGOs and private sector. Although initially conceived mainly as a deployment mechanism for Logistics, the areas in which Standby Partners support WFP has expanded, now covering all thematic areas of WFP.
The Standby Partner support is pivotal for WFP’s operations worldwide, complementing the organization’s gaps and needs. Deployments are used for two main reasons:
WFP needs temporary surge or support in emergency situations but does not have sufficient capacity.
WFP needs a specific technical expertise which is not available.
In addition to the deployment of personnel, Standby Partners also support WFP with Service Modules. These consist in a combination of staff, equipment and/or services such as management of basecamps, engineering and construction, multi sectoral assessment missions, IT equipment and solutions, and teams of experts working on specific projects.
The WFP team managing the Standby Partnership deployments, relationships, and identification of new partners is ALITE, within the Emergency Operations Division at WFP’s Headquarters in Rome, Italy.
The ALITE team would be happy to receive questions here :