84 FOOD, AGRICULTURE & WATER
WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin’ s Statement to the United Nations Security Council, Delivered on 24 April 2015
FOOD SECURITY & THE REFUGEE CRISIS
Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman. Thank you for drawing the world’ s attention back to the victims of Syria’ s ongoing conflict.
Since the beginning of this crisis, the World Food Programme has worked to address the daily food and nutrition needs of 4 million people inside Syria and of 2.3 million people outside Syria.
In 2012, I made my first visit to Jordan’ s Zaatari Refugee Camp. WFP was there working with our partners to provide hot meals to those arriving and monthly food rations to the 17,000 Syrians then calling the camp home.
As I was walking through the camp I met women who had walked for miles carrying small children in search of shelter, food, and safety. I met children who had already been out of school for weeks, for months – and this was in 2012. I met husbands and fathers who were angry! Angry because conflict had forced them to leave their farms, their livestock, or their small business. Angry because they could now only feed their families by standing in lines for food, water and bread.
Because we recognized the importance of bread in the diets of Syrian families, we also began baking and distributing 130,000 pieces of pitta bread per day in addition to our usual rations.
A man began following me through the camp and shouting at me in Arabic. I asked the translator to find out what the man was shouting. He began shouting louder and crumbling a piece of the bread in his hand. The translator said“ He is angry about the bread.”“ He asks if you would feed this terrible bread to your children.”
I said,“ Ask him what is wrong with the bread.” The man shouted back to me and the growing crowd,“ This is Jordanian bread, not Syrian bread!” He shouted“ This is not our bread! This is bad bread!” I asked“ What was his business in Syria?” He said,“ I am a Syrian baker!”
The next day – and every day since – that man and other Syrian refugee bakers worked with our team in Zaatari to produce the right bread. We have since baked and distributed more than 360 million pieces of the right bread, Syrian bread. Bread represents the importance of getting the response right, avoiding a humanitarian response further complicating the already challenging political issues.
The WFP Syrian response team is working across the region to meet the food and nutrition needs of the most vulnerable victims of the Syrian crisis. In the five neighboring countries, we are working outside Syria to serve refugees in both the camps like Zaatari as well as refugees hosted by community neighborhoods. And we are working inside Syria to serve the displaced in opposition- as well as in regimeheld areas.
Excellencies, as you well know, the longer this crisis continues, its victims become ever more vulnerable.
The more people suffer and die from starvation and malnutrition, stunted child development, deprived of nutrition they suffer from long term consequences of deteriorating health and broad despair.
Those inside Syria’ s highest-priority districts – with the highest concentration of displaced people – live without livelihoods, without an income, unable to meet their basic needs.
Before the conflict began Syria was a net food exporter, but drought and conflict have put food increasingly out of reach. Food is harder to produce, harder to import. Inside Syria, wheat is twice as expensive as it was before the crisis. Rice, four times as expensive. Bread prices are up 55 percent.
As a result any food available, is – too often, for too many – inaccessible. 6.8 million people require critical food assistance. More than half a million more than this time last year.
The decline in food security and the destruction and weakening of water and health services have created a serious nutritional crisis. Four million Syrian women and children require preventative and curative nutrition services.
Families face and make impossible decisions to find and access food. Parents pull their children out of school to search for work. Food becomes part of negotiations to marry off young daughters or release children to fight in armed groups.
Gandhi said“ to the mother of a hungry child, a piece of bread is the face of God.” Gandhi was right. We cannot let that piece of bread be delivered by an extremist.
We regularly monitor to ensure the appropriate distribution of WFP food.
Despite our diligence, we did have one widely reported incident where a small amount food WFP was stolen by ISIS and distributed with much publicity on social media.
Inside Syria negotiating humanitarian access to besieged areas can involve up to 50 parties. Determining which routes to take, the times to go, the quantities to be delivered, and even the land mines to avoid can take anything from ten days to ten months.
Where we reach today, we too often cannot reach tomorrow. Idleb and Ar-Raqqa— once regularly accessible— are now unreachable, even with air bridges.