The World Food Programme (WFP) has emerged as the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security. The chapter explores how the need for emergency assistance has increased to meet growing humanitarian needs, and particularly its relationship to conflicts. We explore the evolution of WFP’s objectives from internationalizing US food aid, as a pilot program in FAO, into a full-fledged, multilateral organization, delivering emergency assistance while addressing the disincentive effects of food aid on domestic food production, with substantial evolution from aid in-kind to cash transfers, and from emergency aid to building capacity of developing countries to address their own emergencies. WFP has filled a void that would have existed had it not responded rapidly and innovatively to meet the growing needs of emergency assistance, now serving the largest displaced and refugee population in the world. The chapter also demonstrates the differences between development aid and emergency assistance. For its achievements, WFP was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Prize has also highlighted the need to address the underlying issues of peace and security, without which, the need for emergency aid will continue to grow. The chapter shows how cooperation across international and bilateral organizations has evolved and where it needs to go in the future.
The World Food Programme