World Food Programme

Food-assistance branch of the UN

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February 2025 WFP received directives from the U.S. to halt operations on numerous U.S.-funded grants, despite an emergency waiver by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The suspension affects food aid projects in Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Haiti, and Mali, impacting tens of millions of dollars in Food for Peace Title II program grants.
2024 WFP was assessed by Publish What You Fund and received an overall score of 84.5 in the Aid Transparency Index, which is categorized as a 'very good' score.
June 2024 WFP and FAO released the Hunger Hotspots outlook, highlighting acute food insecurity in 18 hotspots, with Haiti, Mali, Palestine, South Sudan, and Sudan classified as most concerning.
2023 WFP received USD 8.3 billion in funding, marking likely the first funding decrease since 2010, creating a 64% funding gap.
2023 WFP supported over 152 million people across more than 120 countries and territories, demonstrating its extensive global humanitarian reach.
April 2023 Cindy McCain officially begins her role as executive director, succeeding David Beasley.
March 2023 Cindy McCain is appointed as the executive director, with WFP having over 22,300 staff at the time of her appointment.
2022 WFP reached a record funding of USD 14.1 billion, representing an almost 50 percent increase from 2021, against an operational funding need of USD 21.4 billion. The United States was the largest donor.
2022 World Food Programme delivered US$1.6 billion in cash assistance to 37 million people across 70 countries, helping to alleviate hunger through cash transfers including physical banknotes, debit cards, and vouchers.
2022 A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative confirmed that the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) cash programme significantly reduced multidimensional poverty for aid recipients.
October 2020 WFP was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its critical efforts to provide food assistance in conflict zones and prevent the use of food as a weapon of war.
October 2020 WFP, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Fund for Agricultural Development held a joint meeting of their governing bodies to reaffirm their collaborative efforts to end global hunger, with a specific focus on addressing challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.
July 2020 WFP provided emergency food assistance to nearly 160,000 people after floods struck Sudan.
2019 WFP provided food and assistance after Cyclone Idai struck Mozambique, with floods washing away an estimated 400,000 hectares of crops.
September 2019 WFP responded to Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, leveraging its regional Barbados office to coordinate disaster preparedness and response efforts. Technical experts in food security, logistics, and emergency telecommunications were deployed to conduct rapid needs assessments, including an initial aerial reconnaissance mission.
July 2019 WFP provided cash assistance to vulnerable groups in Bangladesh in preparation for anticipated torrential rains, demonstrating proactive support for climate-related risks.
2017 WFP launched the Building Blocks programme, using blockchain technology to digitize identities and enable Syrian refugees in Jordan to receive food assistance through eye scanning.
2013 World Food Programme joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) as its 150th member, committing to regularly publish aid transparency data using the identifier XM-DAC-41140.

This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article World Food Programme, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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