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| WFP's Executive Director briefing reporters in Geneva [PHOTO: UNifeed] |
Geneva: The World Food Program (WFP) received permission from the
Syrian government to work with dozens more local partners to deliver food aid
to the 2.5 million people suffering hunger in the country, the agency chief has announced.
Briefing journalists in Geneva following her recent trip to
Turkey, WFP executive-director Ertharin Cousin said that the Syrian government
had given the agency a list of 110 additional NGOs to now work with.
Cousin said that after assessing the operational capacity of
those 110 NGOs WFP had identified 44 NGOs from the list "which will give
us the availability to scale up to another million persons", but she went
on to warn that "We are always limited by the violence regardless of how
many new partners we bring on".
The WFP has been able to feed only up to 1.5 million people
in Syria each month because of the fighting and a lack of local partners
capable of delivering aid. Its activities have been restricted because the
government stopped it working with many non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
working in Syria.
Cousin also warned that the ability to deliver would be
challenging and added that, "Our goal is to overcome those challenges at
every opportunity to ensure we provide the food that is necessary". -UNifeed