Interview with Robert Hauser, WFP Country Director.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has maintained an active programme in Somalia through years of civil war. Despite the collapse of the state of Somalia, WFP continues to deliver vital aid to vulnerable Somalis from a country office based in Nairobi and several field offices in Somalia. In an interview with IRIN on 20 May in Nairobi, Robert Hauser, WFP Country Director, explained what the agency is doing. Below are excerpts: QUESTION. Please explain what kind of programmes WFP is currently engaged in, in Somalia. ANSWER. The WFP started activities in Somalia long before the government crisis in 1992 and we have been there consistently. At the moment we have three distinct programmes - plain emergency food assistance where there is a drought or floods and where for some other reason people have nothing to eat; selected feeding in health centres where we support the tuberculosis programme of WHO [World Health Organisation], work with UNICEF [UN Children's Fund] on mother and child programmes and so on; and thirdly support to the education sector and schools which is the most important one. The children in Somalia - a large part - have had no formal schooling for 10 years. The illiteracy rate is enormously high. We have to tackle that because only education can take the country out of misery. We do this through school feeding in the schools. We want to expand that programme in the near future. The success rate so far is quite good. Q. How big is the school feeding programme? How many children have you encouraged to return to class? A. At the moment, there are about 6,000 children in 23 schools but we are rapidly working on expanding that - doubling it. Obviously there are schools that are working, especially in the cities. We need to assist on the fringes of the city, in the margins where there are schools but the children do not go. This is where we provide the attraction and support for them to go to school. Q. What level of support do the local Somali communities give when you provide food under this programme? A. The communities are very interested. For example, In the schools, they have built all the kitchen sheds. We only provided the pans, a bit of the cement and so on, but the rest of the work was done by the communities. It is very important to empower them, to give them the responsibility for the schools because neither we nor the government will be there forever. The communities themselves need to look after their schools and they are doing it. Q. Apart from feeding in the schools, do you also give food to other people outside the schools system? A. As I mentioned, we have the support programme to the WHO tuberculosis programme and mother and child programmes. We also support the construction of roads and dams when we realise the community needs these but lacks the means to do it. These are the food-for-work programmes. Q. What is the food situation like in Somalia at the moment - can you give an overview? A. Unfortunately, the country has no statistics, no central government. But it has an extremely dynamic market to the extent that you see one thing one day and it is gone the next because it is sold. The standard estimates relate, to an extent, to the situation before the war. Somalia produced about 30 percent of its requirement of 700,000 mt of cereals and production was estimated at 280,000 mt, depending on the weather conditions and the timeliness of the rains in the agricultural areas. The rest of the food needs to be imported or to be replaced by other food. The pastoralists can replace some of the cereal requirements with milk and meat, but the town people can not. So there have to be some imports, especially in the north where the society prefers rice. It all has to be imported. Q. How have the rains done this year? A. The rains have not done too badly. In some areas the rains came late and have produced a drought situation, but all in all it is not too bad. Q. Do you think the demands on WFP and other relief agencies for food aid will be less this year? A. That will apply only if there are no localised emergency situations. What we have to check as WFP and as a responsible agency is whether we actually need to bring food into a country. For example, we cannot just bring food to the south, because it is the biggest producer. Instead we are targeting household levels because within the south there are people who cannot feed themselves. Q. How much response have you been getting from donors? A. On average the donors have responded to between 50-70 percent of our appeals. In the food sector we have been a bit better off and donors were more generous - which in a way is normal because it is an emergency type of situation. We are very grateful to our donors and hope that they continue that way because we still see a very big scope in Somalia for the kind of work we are doing. Q. How does the fact that Somalia is a country without a centralised government impact on your operations? A. There are two main areas - and some smaller ones in addition -that have governmental structures. In the north there is Somaliland and in the northeast, Puntland. There are also certain areas in the south like Mogadishu and Kismayo where there are authorities which can be considered to be localised governments. There are also communities and trusted people who we can work with. We get support from people in such areas who are wielding power at the time. We also work with international NGOs. But the vast majority of our activities are actually through the communities directly. They are responsible and accountable and the assistance goes directly to the people who need it. Q. You operate out of Nairobi and your work is in Somalia. How easy is it to do this? A. There are two things - one, road travel in Somalia is something that is very difficult in most areas. We have a number of planes inside and outside Somalia that allow us to go inside. At the same time we have about 50 staff in Somalia, including a number who have worked with us for sometime. They know the communities, the neighbourhoods and the country. We trust them and are very comfortable with them. We actually get the food to where it should go. Unfortunately there have been cases where we are trying to bring food to a community but it is almost impossible to get it to an area because there are too many bandits on the road. In that case, we apologise to the community and ask them for patience. But we are willing to deliver - if we can technically. It is sitting there and if they are willing to come for it, that is also fine. Q. What would you like the authorities in Somalia to do? A. We can work very well where we can. As an agency we are not political at all. We help individuals - no matter what colour, what creed and so on. But what we would like from the authorities in Somalia in return, is cooperation and protection. We are totally unprotected - for good reasons; but if the situation is too dangerous we cannot go in. And it is not us who suffer when the situation is too dangerous but the Somali people. We would like to appeal to Somalia authorities and individuals to give us better protection.