Dear Ms. Bernal -

As WFP Executive Director, Josette Sheeran, is travelling, I am replying to your open letter of 18 February from Haiti, where I am leading our agency’s emergency response.

The challenges faced by WFP and partners in establishing from scratch a food distribution system for some two million earthquake-affected people have been immense. We will be the first in line to declare this. Indeed, this has been the most complex relief operation that WFP has ever faced and, perhaps, that the entire humanitarian community has had to tackle. In this disaster, there was often little or no separation between the victims and those that could deliver help. Ninety percent of WFP’s staff in Haiti lost homes, and many of them loved ones. Yet the morning after the earthquake, they were lining up to help.

Now, more than a month on, we are delivering as much food as we can each and every day. WFP’s operation here is the largest intervention of any UN agency in Haiti. I have confidence in the figures from the food commodity reporting system WFP uses globally, which indicates that we have reached more than 3 million people across the disaster zone using high-energy biscuits and ready-to-eat meals (MREs), staple foods such as rice, and special nutrition products which are now being targeted to the most vulnerable people.

Does this mean that you may find a villager who hasn’t yet received food? Yes. Does this mean that perhaps a family may have only received a two-week ration once? Also, yes. But especially over the last two weeks, our capacity to reach more and more people with food has dramatically increased, and we are increasingly able to focus on getting the right types of food assistance to the right people. Our job is far from over, and we have deployed the best, most experienced hands in our agency who are working as hard as they can.

Rice indeed is the major commodity we have been providing these last three weeks in our general distributions. This was necessary in order to quickly stabilise the situation. It is a highly valued staple food in Haiti and was readily available in large quantities when the earthquake wiped out markets and supply chains. It was the most logical first choice.  But rice is by no means the only staple we have been distributing: we have, for example, been giving a range of ‘dry rations’ to the capital’s hospitals and children’s since last month.

We are progressively adding items such as lentils, salt and vegetable oil to our food basket. In hard-hit areas like Jacmel, these items are given as a hot daily meal to orphanages and hospitals. School meal programmes are underway in non-quake-affected areas and are now starting up in the capital. In camps all over Port-au-Prince, a nutrition drive is underway, targeting 53,000 children under five and 16,000 pregnant and breast-feeding mothers with a ready-to-use food fortified with vitamins and minerals. We airlift MREs by helicopter to the quake zone’s remoter communities and continue to distribute high-energy biscuits in that zone – something we began within 24 hours of the earthquake.

WFP is not working alone. NGO partners, Haitian authorities and community leaders are working with us hand-in-hand, doing their very best. They too were not spared from the devastating effects of the earthquake. Imagine running an operation without an office, or even a desk. We have been working to reach the needy from Day One – and, every day, improvement are made to the system targeting these people’s needs.

As you yourself will have witnessed on the ground, the needs of Haiti seem insurmountable at times.  This earthquake has tested the people of Haiti, the international community and the World Food Programme to its core. But I assure you, we are committed to helping Haiti to the best of our ability – we were here long before this emergency and we will remain as long as it takes.

 
Ramiro Lopes da Silva
WFP Deputy Chief Operations Officer
Port au Prince
Haiti