United Nations World Food Program

(WFP)

1. Eradication of poverty caused by food scarcity

Change the World Model United Nations

NYC 2019

WELCOME TO THE SIMULATION

Distinguished Delegates,

Thank you for taking up the challenge of recreating the work of the UN World Health

Organization in our Model United Nations conference. We hope that such experience

will inspire you to immerse completely in the world of diplomacy and geopolitics.

May it be a deeply enriching adventure which will leave you a more conscious and

active citizen of your country and of the world.

Model United Nations is essentially a role-playing game. Your task is to represent the

position of your assigned State on the three topics under discussion. You must

faithfully describe the policy of your state in the Position Paper and defend it in the

debates. Finally, you will need to collaborate with Delegates who represent your

country’s allies to produce the resolution document together. The essence of MUN

revolves around the Rules of Procedure, ie. the protocol according to which debates

are held both in public and in the corridors. At all times, you can count on your

Committee Director and Chair to guide you through all activities.

Like in many games, there are awards to win but the most important aspect is to give

your best and enjoy the show you are creating. What makes MUN unique as a game

is that eventually one can only win by collaborating rather than competing. For

diplomats, the X factor is first and foremost their composure and politeness.

Finally, diplomacy works best when people from different countries develop personal

friendships which might be the only way to ensure peace and progress for all. The

best aspect of our event is most likely giving you the opportunity to meet many

brilliant and passionate people from around the world. We too cannot wait to meet

you in person!

YOU ARE THE

FUTURE LEADERS.

Yours

faithfully,

Advisory Board CWMUN NYC 2019

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME

The World Food Programme[a] (WFP) is the food-assistance branch of the United Nations and the

world's largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security. It is the

leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in

emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience.

WFP was first established in 1961[4] after the 1960 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Conference, when George McGovern, director of the US Food for Peace Programmes, proposed

establishing a multilateral food aid programme. The WFP was formally established in 1963 by the

FAO and the United Nations General Assembly on a three-year experimental basis, and in 1965 the

programme was extended to a continuing basis.

The WFP is the result of the commitment by the international community to transform lives to an

unprecedented degree by 2030. This commitment extends to reaching SDG 2, on achieving Zero

Hunger, and SDG 17, on partnering to support implementation of the SDGs, goals that require

extraordinary levels of technical know-how and operational capability to achieve.

The WFP has set several objectives to be achieved through his work;

1. "Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies"

2. "Support food security and nutrition and (re)build livelihoods in fragile settings and following

emergencies"

3. "Reduce risk and enable people, communities and countries to meet their own food and

nutrition needs"

4. "Reduce undernutrition and break the intergenerational cycle of hunger"

5. "Zero Hunger in 2030"

In order to obtain these aims, on any given day, WFP has 5,000 trucks, 20 ships and 92 planes on the

move, delivering food and other assistance to those in most need in 85 countries in the world. Every

year, we distribute more than 15 billion rations at an estimated average cost per ration of US$ 0.31.

In emergencies, WFP is often first on the scene, providing food assistance to the victims of war, civil

conflict, drought, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, crop failures and natural disasters. When the

emergency subsides, WFP helps communities rebuild shattered lives and livelihoods.

WFP is the largest humanitarian organisation implementing school feeding programmes worldwide

and has been doing so for over 50 years. Each year, WFP provides school meals to 18.3 million

children across 65 countries, often in the hardest-to-reach areas.

WFP purchases 3 million metric tons of food every year. At least three quarters of it comes from

developing countries.

WFP is governed by a 36-member Executive Board. It works closely with its two Rome-based sister

organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International

Fund for Agricultural Development. WFP partners with more than 1,000 national and international

NGOs to provide food assistance and tackle the underlying causes of hunger.

Eradication of poverty caused by food scarcity

Food poverty

Despite over the past 40 years, per capita world food production has grown by 25%, with for example

the annual cereal production up from 420 to 1176 million tonnes (FAO, 2000). These

global increases have helped to raise average per capita consumption of food by 17% over 30 years

to 2760 kcal per day, a period during which world population grew from 3.69 to 6.0 billion. Despite

such advances in productivity, the world still faces a persistent food security challenge. The United

Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that about 815 million people of the

7.6 billion people in the world, or 10.7%, were suffering from chronic undernourishment and

experiencing food poverty in 2016. Almost all the hungry people live in lower-middle-income

countries. There are 11 million people undernourished in developed countries (FAO 2015; for

individual country estimates, see Annex 1. For other valuable sources, especially if interested in

particular countries or regions, see IFPRI 2016 and Rosen et. al. 2016).

Food poverty here refers to household-level hunger. Households in food poverty do not have enough

food to meet the energy and nutrient needs of all of their members.

Some households live under conditions of chronic or seasonal food poverty. Other households are

pushed into food poverty because of changes in area food availability and/or in their own ability to

secure entitlement to food.

Given no shortage of food on the global level, all incidence of food poverty can be attributed to

maldistribution rather than underproduction. "Distribution" in this context includes transportation and

storage, as well as production patterns and crop choices; it is not simply a matter of shuffling around

existing food. Reducing food shortage at national and sub-national levels is an important tool for

reducing food poverty, but not simply because lack of shortage eliminates the necessity of food

poverty. Productive and distributive mechanisms - not just food availability - change when there is

food shortage.

A special case of food shortage is violent conflict that reduces food availability and changes patterns

of food distribution in affected countries. Food imports during times of violence are often restricted

by embargoes. During both international and intranational conflict, governments put a high priority

on provisioning the military, which tends to decrease civilian access to food. Although it is

theoretically possible for local food production to increase enough to offset the food deficit caused

by embargoes and diversion of existing supplies to the military, this usually does not happen quickly

enough to avoid increased poverty. It is much more common for internal food production to decrease,

because land has been abandoned and livestock sold by agriculturists seeking to avoid being

plundered.

Children are the most visible victims of food poverty. It is estimated that undernutrition—including

stunting, wasting, deficiencies of vitamin A and zinc, and fetal growth restriction (when a baby does

not grow to its normal weight before birth)—is a cause of 3·1 million child deaths annually or 45

percent of all child deaths in 2011 (UNICEF, World Health Organization [WHO], & The World Bank,

2018). Undernutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria. The

estimated proportions of deaths in which undernutrition is an underlying cause are roughly similar

for diarrhea (61%), malaria (57%), pneumonia (52%), and measles (45%) (Black 2003, Bryce 2005).

Undernutrition can also be caused by diseases, such as those that cause diarrhea, by reducing the

body’s ability to convert food into usable nutrients.1

The UN estimates additional $267 billion per year on average to end world hunger

by 2030. There will need to be investments in rural and urban areas and in social protection, so poor

people have access to food and can improve their livelihoods.2

Social consequences of food scarcity and poverty

Food poverty causes major issues in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. Three

potential areas of consequences of food insecurity at the household level were apparent, namely,

physical, psychological and sociofamilial.

Apart from obvious consequences such as fatigue (depletion) and/or illness related to insufficient

food. Food insecurity, along with the health-compromising

coping strategies associated with food insecurity, can exacerbate existing disease. Some of these

exacerbated conditions include poor glycemic control for people with diabetes, end stage renal

disease for people with chronic kidney disease, and low CD4 counts and poor antiretroviral therapy

adherence among people living with HIV. Food insecurity also can complicate and compound the

health challenges and expenses faced by households with children who have special health care needs

or adults with disabilities — populations at high risk for food insecurity3.

These physical manifestations could translate into a lack of concentration at school and low work

capacity either at home or at work. Psychological manifestations related to a lack of access to food

leads to a clear feeling of being constrained to go against held norms and values, as well as creating

enormous stress in the home.

1 https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/#hunger-number 2 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Goal-2.pdf 3 http://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/hunger-health-impact-poverty-food-insecurity-health-well-being.pdf

A third area of consequences is a variety of sociofamilial perturbations that cover the modification

of eating patterns and related ritual, disrupted household dynamics as well as distorted means of food

acquisition and management. Households had to modify their eating patterns and satisfy themselves

with meals that were not complete and/or balanced from their perspective. Each of these fields also

has a corollary at the “social” level, with people experiencing food insecurity witnessing sharp

increases in medical expenditures and a decrease in their incomes.4

How to eradicate poverty caused by food insecurity according to the UN agencies

The United Nations have been stressing the importance to equal access to food for years: Resolution

7/14 of 2008 titled “The right to food” by the Human Rights Council affirms that “hunger constitutes

an outrage and a violation of human dignity” and that measures at the regional, national and

international level are required. Furthermore, the HRC was concerned by the fact that children and

women are disproportionately affected by hunger, food insecurity and poverty.

The UN have put the eradication of hunger problems and poverty caused by food scarcity at the top

of the list of Sustainable Development Goals inserted in the “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

Development,” adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, which provides a shared

blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.

Target n.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals is called “Zero Hunger”, and aims to to end hunger,

achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture because “Extreme

hunger and malnutrition remains a barrier to sustainable development and creates a trap from which

people cannot easily escape. Hunger and malnutrition mean less productive individuals, who are more

prone to disease and thus often unable to earn more and improve their livelihoods.”5

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), investments in the

agricultural sector are fundamental for the eradication of poverty, hunger and malnutrition since it

4 https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/129/2/525S/4731686 5 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Goal-2.pdf

would increase the quantity of food per-day and the income, particularly in rural areas where most of

the world’s poorest live.

According to the FAO Report “Ending poverty and Hunger investing in Agriculture and Rural

Areas”, evidence shows that investment in agriculture is more effective in reducing poverty,

particularly amongst the poorest people, than investment in non-agricultural

sectors. It is also up to 3.2 times better at reducing poverty in low-income and resource-rich countries

(including those in sub-Saharan Africa) at least when societies are not unequal.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), pro-poor investments in

agriculture would:

Promoting access to technologies and capacity development that enhance the employability

and entrepreneurial capacity of rural people by expanding access to finance and financial

services. These actions should place a particular emphasis on youth, women, landless workers

and other groups facing substantial risk of exclusion;

Supporting the development of membership-based farmers’ organizations and their

professionalization and building business models for farmers’ organizations to better access

markets;

Promoting financial literacy and management skills, communication, advocacy and

transparency;

Promoting participatory research (that involves or is led by farmers and other local

stakeholders) on topics such as seed conservation/ dissemination, small machines,

agroforestry systems, agroecology, water harvesting technologies;6

The World Food Programme through its Strategic Plan 2017-2021 focuses on ending hunger and

contributing to a revitalized global partnership to implement the Sustainable Development

6 IFAD. 2016. Rural Development Report 2016. International Fund for Agriculture and Development: Rome.

Goals (SDGs). It provides a conceptual framework for a new planning and operational structure that

will enhance WFP’s contribution to country efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for

Sustainable Development.

The objectives of the WFP Strategic Plan can be summarized as:

End hunger – access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food at all times

Achieve improved nutrition – consumption of nutritionally adequate diets with

complementary actions to support utilization

Achieve food security – availability of safe, nutritious, and sufficient food and stability of

food systems

Promote sustainable agriculture – stability of food systems and inputs

In order to achieve those objectives, the WFP sponsors and fosters partnership between institutional

partners (FAO, IFAD, World Bank, UNDP, UNHCR), non-governmental organizations such as the

Red Cross, private investors and firms and governments through the so-called “WFP Country

Strategic Plans”, which will consist in countries enjoying the WFP’s entire portfolio of activities for

a limited period of time, allowing the WFP to be more effective and enjoy more flexibility in its

missions. 7

7 https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/bddf17c696c247ccb1e4f754e32bf173/download/