Doha, March 05 (QNA) – The World Food Programme’s Yemen Representative and Country Director, Richard Ragan praised the State of Qatar’s prominent role in providing humanitarian aid, stressing that it is a major United Nations partner in supporting humanitarian work around the world.
In an interview with Qatar News Agency (QNA), Ragan noted Qatar’s contribution of USD 100 million to support the efforts of the United Nations World Food Program in Yemen in the past years, noting that it was among the largest contributors in the region.
He added that the State of Qatar has earned an important position when it comes to organizing and hosting major global events, exemplifying its hosting of the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), an important congregation of world leaders, which also provides the United Nations World Food Program an opportunity to meet and talk with partners on ways to strengthen partnerships, not only with WFP in Yemen but with WFP world-wide.
Ragan explained that WFP is the largest humanitarian agency in the world, having partnerships with a large number of leaders and officials from LDC5 participating countries, indicating that from his position as World Food Programme’s Yemen Representative, he sees the importance of strengthening the international community’s role in helping Yemen to establish peace.
He pointed out that the WFP’s indicator of success lies in its leaving the country in which it operates, adding that he constantly deals with conflict, disaster, and instability.
Ragan elaborated that transitioning from a situation of humanitarian aid and life-saving to that of resilience and development should be the focus of attention in Yemen, hoping that Yemen continues to move towards peace, in which the focus is on development instead of life-saving.
World Food Programme’s Yemen Representative pointed out that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals aim to slash hunger figures by half by 2030, which is an ambitious goal, yet unfortunately, WFP has many accumulated files for people in need of life-saving aid, almost double the figures from eight years ago, pointing out that when the program began 23 years ago, its budget was USD 2 billion a year, however, that now the budget in Yemen alone is USD 2.9 billion a year.
He added that the demand for international aid from the WFP has reached USD 20 billion, making the WFP the largest program in the United Nations system, which is not a good thing, explaining that hunger is a huge problem and that when things are actually going well, the WFP shrinks, yet that unfortunately, this is not the state of the world currently, heading towards even more worrying trends.
World Food Programme’s Yemen Representative and Country Director Richard Ragan said in an interview with Qatar News Agency (QNA) that the conflict in Ukraine caused a shift in food and fuel prices, together with the climatic shocks that are now beginning to crystallize more clearly globally, with changes in temperatures and seasons taking place and a rise in the severity of natural disasters, which will have a significant impact on world food security, pointing out that with these climatic variables, agricultural conditions will change and people in some parts of the world will not be able to grow the same quantities as they used to in the past.
The UN official added that, on the other hand, people who were not able to grow anything will find themselves able to grow some crops, thus, some global patterns will change in the next three decades, adding that in the past twenty years, instability and the massive exodus of refugees have been taking place, including massive internal displacement in Yemen, therefore, assessing that over the next three decades, climate challenge must be the focus all efforts and energies.
Ragan added that the World Food Program (WFP) needs USD 20 billion in 2023 to save human lives from starvation, and thus from death, saying that he knows very well that famine can be stopped if large and enough funding was allocated, saying that over the course of Yemen’s 8 years of conflict, the program reached a historical record becoming the largest humanitarian program for the WFP to last for 8 years, with a large and continuous sum, however, now the program is at a stage where it is not providing food rations due to a lack of funding, yet nevertheless, the program can reach 13.5 million people with general food assistance, and another 6.5 million people through nutrition-based and resilience-based programs.
At the end of his interview with QNA, World Food Programme’s Yemen Representative Richard Ragan affirmed the program’s ability to intervene to save lives and to contribute to development, thanks to the fact that since its inception, development was an integral part of the country. program’s interests, where food was used as a starting point for the intervention.
Ragan mentioned that the WFP has ten offices in which 1,000 employees are working throughout Yemen, indicating that despite the difficulty of working in the country, only the program’s staff can reach the residents of all regions, putting the program in a very special position where it can transition from the stage of humanitarian work and saving lives to working on development, which is what the program aims to achieve in Yemen in the coming years. (QNA)
Source: Qatar News Agency