Dubai hosts WFP meet

Executive Director of World Food Programme, Ertharin Cousin, chaired in Dubai last week the WFP’s Global Management Meeting, which brought together senior managers from 90 offices worldwide. This was the first time that WFP held its annual meeting in the Middle East. The meeting was hosted by the Dubai’s International Humanitarian City (IHC) and the Government of Dubai with support from Emirates Airlines and Atlantis the Palm Hotel. As the World Food Programme ramped up its food assistance projects in Arab countries like Syria and Yemen, Cousin also visited the agency’s facilities at IHC, the largest humanitarian logistics hub worldwide. With more than 40,000 sqm of space offered by IHC, WFP is the largest user of the Dubai-based logistics center for UN agencies, the Red Crescent and Red Cross and other major NGOs that provide aid in both emergencies and for development to help the poor in less developed countries. WFP maintains staff there of more than 100 handling both food assistance and emergency communications for which WFP has the lead in the UN system. WFP first started operating in Dubai in 2005 as a result of USD10m grant from His Highness Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and other private Dubai corporate sources. Chaired by UN Messenger of Peace Her Royal Highness Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, wife of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the IHC now has nine UN agencies and more than 40 NGOs and commercial companies as members with over 300 staff in Jebel Ali, which is strategically located between the new Al Maktoum International Airport and Jebel Ali Port. Members maintain stocks of food, water purifiers, tents, communications equipment and medicines critical for aid operations. In addition, its facilities include a training and conference center and operational offices for both UN and NGO members. The IHC also houses temporary offices for UN members when staff are evacuated during natural disasters and manmade conflicts. Aid is shipped primarily to eastern and southern Africa and Asia, though it has been shipped as far away as Haiti after the major earthquake there in 2010. WFP managers will address critical issues like rising global food prices, conflicts in Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the persistence of chronic malnutrition in large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia at a time when donations from some traditional Western donors are beginning to contract. The tour of IHC facilities was conducted by the CEO of the IHC, Shaima Al Zarooni.