World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin (left) visited Panama on 26 April where she met with Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Mayra Arosemena. Panama currently hosts WFP's Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, which overseas operations in 11 countries, and also the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD Panama), which is part of global network of five depots.

The WFP Executive Director visited the UN Humanitarian Response Depot or UNHRD, located in Corozal, Panama. This UNHRD stockpiles items for UN, governmental and non-governmental organizations which need to be deployed in case of an emergency. UNHRD Panama is part of a global HRD network with installations in Brindisi (Italy), Accra (Ghana), Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and Subang (Malaysia). 

The primary advantage of the HRDs is more rapid deployment of physical and/or virtual stocks and cost-savings in pre-positioning or dispatching the most urgently needed humanitarian aid to the disaster locations.

UNHRD Panama currently stores and manages the emergency stocks of 15 partners: the World Food Programme (WFP), the Spanish International Agency for Cooperation and Development (AECID), Intermom Oxfam, Irish Aid, World Vision, Unicef, WHO/PAHO, Care, Mercy Corps, Swiss Red Cross, Action Against Hunger, Shelter Box, KOICA and the White Helmets.

The UNHRD depot in Panama has seen its fair share of activity with the provision of much needed relief supplies to Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Haiti, among other emergencies. WFP established the UNHRD network in five strategic hubs that provide logistics and procurement services for the emergency response operations of all UN agencies, as well as international, governmental and non-governmental organisations.