ROME, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- 2005 has been "the most challenging year the humanitarian aid world has faced since World War II," says the United Nations World Food Program.
But the coming year will undoubtedly bring further emergencies and even greater demands on donors, the program's Executive Director James Morris said Tuesday.
"The fact is that 2005 was an exceptional year of disaster, an annus horribilis for millions of people across the developing world," Morris said, recalling the relentless onslaught of the Indian Ocean tsunami, drought and locusts in Niger, continuing conflict in Darfur, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Stan, and concluding with the devastating earthquake in Kashmir.
In contrast to the overwhelming response to the tsunami, many UNWFP operations remained dangerously underfunded, Morris added in a year-end report. Its appeal for $100 million for U.N. relief operations in Pakistan is only about one-third funded, while its operation to feed some 10 million people in southern Africa was more than $100 million short of the $317 million needed.
The big challenge now is the time lag between a disaster occurring and donations coming in, Morris added. One way UNWFP is tackling this is by drawing on reserve funds in anticipation of donations coming in. The agency is also experimenting with a scheme to provide famine insurance to vulnerable populations in regions prone to drought.
UNWFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: feeding an average 90 million a year, including 61 million hungry children, in more than 80 of the world's poorest countries.
