Press Conference: Carl Skau, Acting Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP)

All right.
Good afternoon.
We're delighted to be joined by not our old friend, but our longtime friend, Carl Skau, who, as you know, is the acting Executive Director of the World Food Program.
I think this is your first briefing since taking up those functions.
So Carl, welcome.
Yeah.
You have the floor and then we'll take some questions.
Thank you and really great to be with you.
I mean, I think since last time we met, I've been to Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, a few other operations, so happy to speak to any operation.
WFP is the frontline agency in most places.
So if you want updates from those frontlines and a bit of flavor from that, that's what we can offer.
But I thought today to update on three main topics.
The first one, the food security implications of the crisis in the Middle East, the second, how we are supporting WHO governments and others in the EBL response.
Thirdly, maybe give a little bit of testimony to how the funding crunch is really hitting hard in some specific context.
Let me start with the Middle East crisis.
Already some six to eight weeks ago, we raised alarm that should the crisis continue and the price of energy remain or the price of oil remain over $100 a a barrel until July, some 45 million people will be pushed into hunger.
That's mainly because the correlation between the price of energy and food is so tight in many places and also that in the poorest countries, people are already spending all their money on food and hence when food prices rise, they eat less.
We're now releasing a report that is beginning to show how this is playing out.
We remain with that prognosis, but we will now be able to give and more detail to that and I will ask my colleagues also following this briefing to circulate additional information to you.
We have looked particularly into three contexts, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka and in Somalia, we're seeing 2.5 million people additional now being acutely food insecure.
In Afghanistan, the number is 2.3 million.
And in Afghanistan, 1.3.
In all three countries, there is a different mix of issues that is driving this.
Increased prices is one.
But there is also the element of one, underfunded humanitarian responses and development responses, but also that the cost of doing business, if you will, the cost of running humanitarian operations has gone up dramatically and hence, with the limited funding that is there, less people are being reached.
You will see from the reports released that there is a different mix coming together in all the different contexts.
But again, just to illustrate that what we warn against is now playing out in real time in many of these contexts.
What I would add to that is that the long term implications might be even more severe.
You have heard reports, not least from FEO speaking about the impact of or lack of fertilizer.
There is now the planting season most of Eastern Africa.
The season rainy season is on its way, and we are really worried that productivity will go down.
We saw that at the start of the war in Ukraine and that would then have implications, let's say, six to nine months from here.
Ebola and the eastern DRC, this is really a crisis already.
In Ituri province where the outbreak reportedly started, hundreds of thousands of people are already displaced and only in the past couple of months we saw additional tens of thousands of people displaced.
It's a place where 1 million people are also acutely food insecure and we are just barely meeting the minimum requirements in terms of a response that has been underfunded now for many years, but even more severely so over the past few months.
But we are stepping up.
We have, of course, a strong presence as WFP in that province and out in the communities, and we are now, if you will, lending that capacity, that presence, that logistics capacity to the health response, working very closely with WHO, with UNICEF, but also with CDC, the government of the DRC, and also local authorities who are really the frontline in responding to this.
And our support, as I mentioned, is mainly to provide logistical services, to move first responders, but also equipment to the outbreak front lines and also providing for air Medvac needless to say, this is a very complicated place to operate.
There is also a food element to this.
People who are isolated or quarantined need food, but also their dependents who are impacted by the fact that their loved ones not present, also needs additional support.
That's an element that we are doing, if you will, in addition to that more purely health response.
Then turning to the historic funding gap.
You've heard me say that before that we are facing a perfect storm with record high levels of hunger is now risking to get even higher.
At the same time, we've seen historic drops in our funding with a 40% drop year to year.
Last year.
We hope that that level will stabilize this year, but it's still extremely unpredictable and some contexts are hit more than others.
I will point to two of those.
One is Somalia, where we are now facing the possibility of famine like conditions.
Our colleagues on the ground are working around the clock to try to prevent that.
We have the data, we have the experience, and we've done it before.
The resources are simply not there.
Acting now, of course, is so much cheaper than waiting until the disaster has arrived.
We saw that when we responded some three years ago to a similar drought situation, but then donors really stepped up and we're not seeing at all that level of support at the moment.
So Somalia is certainly one context that we want to draw attention to.
The second one is Afghanistan.
I've just come back from Afghanistan and I think to talk about a crisis on top of a crisis in the DRC, the crisis in Afghanistan are manifold.
Only last year, heavy earthquake, true severe floods, and then of course, really the shock waves from the war in Iran and now the conflict also with Pakistan.
In the midst of all this, some 2.8 million people have been forced to return.
Mainly from Pakistan but also from Iran.
That is in a country that is more than 10% of the population.
I was at the border to Pakistan, a border posting where some 700,000 people per day are coming back.
I met a mother there, some 20-years-old, maybe three kids who was returning.
Her husband had already been deported a month before that, was waiting for her in some town, in Afghanistan.
She had never lived in Afghanistan.
She was born herself in Pakistan and they were now heading up to some village where her grandparents were still living, obviously without any plan or prospects to create a living.
That is what's playing out across the country with now more than 2.8 million people only in the past year.
Was also outside Jalabad in one of the rural health clinics looking at one of our nutrition support centers.
We have run out completely of commodities, partly because of funding, but partly also now about the constraints in supply chain, whereas we used to take the commodities across the border from Pakistan.
This health clinic was completely empty of commodities, both from us and from the authorities and from UNICEF.
I saw there are hundreds of mothers with their severely visibly malnourished children on their arms who had to turn back.
Many of them had already walked three or 4 hours to get to the clinic and they left empty handed.
I've never seen anything like it, frankly, in my visits and the desperation in there at that clinic is hard to describe.
I wanted to share that because that is the real impact of these cuts that we have kept talking to you about.
It's important for you to know that that is playing out and it's having that direct dimension to it.
I think I'll leave this, Stefan, but happy, as I said at the outset, to take any questions you may have about our operations across.
Thank you.
Ed, please.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Sk, on behalf of the United Nations Correspondents Association, and congratulations on your assuming the acting Executive Director of WFP.
As you long know, my name is Edith Letter from the Associated repress.
I have two questions, but let me start with the funding issue.
You said the cost of operations is going up.
Contributions are either static or going down.
Is WFP going to be running out of money before the end of the year, and what is the implication for that for all of the millions of hungry people that you try to feed.
And I'm Secondly, specifically on Afghanistan and what you saw there, can you tell us whether you got to talk to any senior Taliban officials and what they are or aren't doing to try and help alleviate this crisis.
Thank you.
I think that.
I mean, the funding picture looks somewhat different to different contexts.
Of course, the flexible resources that we have available, we allocate purely based on needs, which means that in West Africa, for example, with very little donor support, we're allocating a lot of our internal resources.
Myanmar is in another context that is not getting enough support, and we're trying to do so also in other contexts that I spoke to, but our internal resources are not enough to cater to millions of people that I referred to in Afghanistan and Somalia, for example.
If I would highlight two contexts that are particularly hard hit when it comes to this funding crunch.
It is Somalia and Afghanistan.
The list is longer than that, but that's where I will really raise alarm and where we appeal to donors to step up because the human consequence of not doing more will be massive.
I think the second is that we're not seeing the same response when we also have sudden onset crisis that we used to.
One example of that is Lebanon where you basically have a greater crisis now than you did two years ago, and now we're only seeing about half of the money coming forward that we saw last time.
Frankly, the government is doing all it can.
It's doing all the right things.
I think as a humanitarian and UN system, we also, you know, we were well prepared and we've geared up working closely with those government and local authority efforts and so everything is in place in a way.
What is lacking is, of course, a cease fire so that we can access all the people and the people can return.
But secondly, it is the funding, and it's nowhere near what we saw only two years ago.
I think the Ebola response is another example of that.
You know, We have forwarded a lot of our internal resources to be able to step up and do what's necessary to contain this quickly, but we're not seeing the same level of resources coming forward that we have seen in previous similar crisis either in the DRC or in West Africa.
We are indeed in a different funding environment.
We're all aware of that.
But I think it's important that we begin speaking more concretely to the impact that this is having.
We need more resources really to be able to contain the Ebola crisis in the eastern DRC.
And in order to have also the trust of the communities necessary to do so, we need to show that we're also stepping up on different fronts, including addressing the broad food insecurity situation in that province.
I think on Afghanistan, yes, I met with the Deputy Prime Minister and, of course, with the governor and other representatives at the local level when I traveled to the field.
I insisted with them, on one hand, to open a humanitarian corridor across the Pakistan Afghanistan border.
We are hopeful that that will happen.
We have received assurances from both the Pakistani and Afghan side.
And so that was quite comforting.
Let's see if that happens.
We stand ready.
We including nutrition commodities on the Pakistan side and hope that that will come through.
The second item I raised, of course, is the women's rights and not least the possibility for our female workers to fully participate in our workforce.
We have some 380 female colleagues in Afghanistan.
They are all working not least in the field, but with restrictions that we find unacceptable, and that was also raised with authorities.
I do a quick follow up? Why do you think the level of financial support is not being matched to what WFP was receiving previously? Well, I think proportionally, we are not harder hit than any other humanitarian actor or UN agency.
I think it is the fact that the overall envelope is shrinking and we were part of that overall hit.
There was a recent report issued by the OSD that showed that the overall envelope has dramatically shrunk and our drop in contributions is just a reflection of that.
I think what could be important to say is that we're not just sitting back letting this hit us.
Of course, we're leaning forward to see what can we do to try to narrow that gap between needs and resources.
And one is, of course, to tap any efficiency possible.
And we have cut heavily at our HQ, making sure that all the resources we have are geared towards our operations in the field.
Secondly, that we're working more effectively, and that's a wide range of efforts.
One is to target more clearly.
It's also about doing cash as quickly as we can, trying to make people be self reliant as quickly as possible, working on resilience and anticipatory action before crisis hit.
Of course, it's trying to work ourselves out of business.
I think the idea that you are bragging having been 30 to 40 years in a country, can no longer be.
We need to, from the start, always look at exit and how we strengthen local and national capacities for us to depart.
I think that's something that is at the center of the new strategic plan of WFP, and that's a culture shift that we really want to see in the organization.
Finally, it's working with others in the context of the UN ADT, where we, together with others are leading on a number of initiatives that we think will be transformative for the system.
We're not sitting back idly to just appeal for more money.
We're putting on the table what we can do to try to narrow that gap.
But I think it's important to be honest as well, that that is not going to do the job.
We need more resources to come forward.
IptiSU and IbsU.
Thank you.
My name is Ipsa Azim the newspaper.
Two questions.
One about the occupied Palestinian territory, specifically Gaza and the West Bank challenges you are facing there and also how these challenges affecting specifically women, children, and elderly people.
The other one is about Yemen.
I think Stephanie yesterday was talking about increase in number of people in need and food insecure.
If you could also talk about Yemen and challenges you are facing there.
Thank you.
We have been able to respond at scale in Gaza since the start of the cease fire, but under increasing pressure over the past few weeks, I should say, or since the war in the Gulf escalated.
So we have been able to somewhat stabilize the food security situation, but food is not everything and the other sectors are really struggling partly due to constraints under the idea of dual use.
So in the shelter sector, in water and sanitation, in healthcare, but also just trying to bring girls and boys back to school.
There is not enough progress.
That was also part of phase one in terms of humanitarian support, and we're by far not there.
We stand ready to do more in terms of supporting others on logistics, but they need to also have access to bring in their commodities to scale up on those fronts.
So While we have managed to some degree stabilize the food situation, life in Gaza remains brutal.
We are also present on the West Bank, but that's mainly a protection crisis.
We are trying to mitigate the impact by providing cash to families affected.
But obviously, there are other UN agencies that are better placed to speak to that situation.
I think on Yemen, we're deeply concerned about the food security situation and there has been IPC reports pointing also to a deterioration of the situation there.
As you know, we are for the moment not able to operate in the North.
We have 38 of our colleagues detained by the Houthi authority.
We are actively pursuing every effort to have them released along with all the other UN colleagues.
But not only that, all our offices in Northern Yemen have been occupied.
All our assets in Northern Yemen are confiscated.
And so obviously under such environment, you cannot simply do work.
But we stand ready to do what we can as soon as the operating environment is conducive enough to resume.
Just a quick follow up on the dual use that you talked about regarding the Israelis not allowing specific things to enter Gaza.
Can you explain? I think it's better that Tom does because he has the overview, Tom Fletcher and OCA.
But what we are witnessing on the ground doing the food work is that, yes, we are making some progress, not as much as we want, by the way, I should say that as well.
We would have preferred to move into more cash if the commercial sector on the food side had picked up because if market is working, there are more of a diversity of commodities on those markets, we would prefer to expand our cash services.
That has not been possible.
If anything, we have taken steps back lately.
But what my colleagues are saying is that while we would like to do more and we are also facing challenges on a daily basis with access and not getting the enabling capacities that we need to work smoothly, it's really in other sectors that the situation is even more pressing and so we like to also draw attention to that.
Be then Swin Thank you very much.
Bisha Abuk with De Jair Arabic.
I wanted to ask about Sudan.
I have a couple of questions.
Sudan, I mean, you didn't mention Sudan in your opening remarks.
If you can share some more information how the budget cuts are affecting your operations in Sudan and the situation there.
And on Lebanon, you were saying you need a cease fire to be able to reach areas.
Can you also tell us more which areas are you finding more difficult to reach and are there any avenues that since Lebanon is in the news constantly now, are there any specific avenues to try and get more funding for Lebanon? I mean, I think on Sudan, about six months ago, we were able to reach 4-5 million people every month and most of them with full Rians.
We are now down to three to 4 million and in many places it's half Russian in the risk of famine areas, we're still at 70% of the Russians.
We have really had to contract in a place where we had for a couple of years really fought to gain that space and to gain that access.
And so it's very frustrating for our teams once we have been able to scale up, start helping people to have been forced to then contract again due to funding constraints.
You know, the needs are immense, and there's lots we can do across the country and the needs are different.
I mean, there are stable parts in the east where we should be helping farmers to get back on land so that productivity comes up, there is more food available in the country, prices come down and people eat more.
In the Khartoum area, for example, where there has been a lot of returns, the authorities are now trying to open back up schools.
We would like to do school meals to over 1 million children to make sure that the kids come back to school, but also to address the serious malnutrition situation in that context.
Then in Darfur, of course, and in the Cordovan, it's more of a purely humanitarian response that is required.
I spent a whole week going to Twila.
I spent a week in Darfur.
I was in Twila.
And there are 700,000 people there who survived the beseechment of El Fs, who survived getting out of El Fasl and who are now left stranded in a camp, and I have never seen anything like it.
It's an ocean of grass huts.
You drive, and you don't see the end.
There are grass huts to the horizon, basically.
And these people are left with nothing in terms of support to healthcare at school.
Yes, we bring food convoys in providing food maybe every other month, but that food only lasts them two or three weeks and then they have to cope again.
So That is one situation where we just need a completely different level of scale.
But to do that, we also need to be able to be present with international staff.
We would need to have an UNS solution because it takes forever to get there.
And we need access in a completely different way so that we can bring commodities on a regular basis at scale.
In the Kovans, it's a different situation.
There, the fighting continues and the security risks are very high.
We have lost several colleagues in Sudan.
And here, of course, we would like to see a cease fire, if not some kind of humanitarian arrangement so that we can operate across across front lines.
There are many displays there that are not being accessed at the moment, apart from maybe through creative cash solutions that we do together with local partners.
But that's maybe what I would share on Sudan.
But I feel a frustration around Sudan because it's a situation where the international community certainly failed to prevent this war.
We have not managed to end it, nor have we managed to uphold international humanitarian law and protect civilians and now we're not even able to provide the basic assistance that people stranded in IDP camps, frankly, should expect us to.
I think on Lebanon, I mean, it's clearly in the South where we have access challenges.
People are still remaining behind and as soon as we have assurances that we can travel with convoys safely, we do so.
But it's not regular and it's not enough.
Of course, we're running out of money in terms of providing cash to the hundreds of thousands displaced.
And we're also looking at now cheaper models to provide food for those who are stuck in temporary shelters because the hot meals that we kicked off at the start is too expensive over time.
And frankly, also, we need to find ways where people can cook for themselves to bring back some normalcy and dignity in life as well.
So that's what I can say about our Lebanon operation.
Okay, sure, then we'll go online, then we have to close it off.
Go ahead.
Hi, ambassor Ambassador is easier than acting executive directors.
I'll go with that.
Once an absor, always an ambsador.
You mentioned the 45 million estimate, right, the WFP made in terms of this war continuing in the Middle East.
By the end of June, 45 million people would fall into acute food insecurity.
You say this is playing out in real time.
I wonder if there are any predictions or estimates that you might have about how many people are dying as a result of this war and the rising in food costs and your inability to get to people due to all sorts of issues, including funding.
People are going to die if they're acutely food insecure.
Is that not the point? Yeah, but I think it's very complex and complicated to quantify that.
But I will ask my colleagues as they update you on the specific context to also speak more directly to that.
I mean, mostly like in famine situations, people die from a variety of reasons where food and montrition may be the main driver and hence the counting of numbers is difficult.
But I will make sure that we also add elements to that in the report that we issue on this.
Thank you.
Jacqueline Charles.
Jacqueline, go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about Haiti, given, we've seen this upsurge in violence and now we're in the middle of hurricane season, this is always a challenge for WFP.
What's your outlook on the current situation challenges? Thanks.
Well, great.
Thank you.
I mean, we continue to.
It's a very impressive operation, frankly, which I'm proud of in Port-au-Prince.
We have been able to reach these areas of Port-au-Prince controlled by gangs now for months and frankly years where it's hard to imagine, but we have pockets of IPC five.
I mean, the highest food insecurity in an island so close to New York.
But so we continue that and we continue to also be the backbone of the logistics where we bring a helicopter in and out of Port-au-Prince every day.
To support other humanitarian operations as well.
We are concerned about two things at the moment, of course.
One is, as efforts are underway to stabilize the security situation and hopefully also make progress on the political situation, that there will be escalation of violence and that access that we currently have to civilians across the different lines will be constrained.
And so You know, we really need to watch this and make sure that those security efforts are happening in a way that still allow for humanitarian independence, neutrality, and access in parallel.
The second is resources again, as attention may be geared to security, which is understandable and legitimate, that is not taking resources away from humanitarian effort because I can see a scenario where there is progress on security and on the political front without also making progress on the humanitarian and development front in Haiti.
And so that needs to go hand in hand and in parallel.
And oftentimes, when focus is on one thing, we drop focus on the other, and I think that's something that can't happen if this is the moment and the opportunity to turn a page in Haiti.
Sorry, we have to close it because I know Karl's got another appointment, but I know Carl will be back in person or virtually as soon as he can.
And then I'll just ask you for about a ten minute intermission before Or 15 before we come back to the briefing.
Thank you.
Thank you.