DATE=10-09-03

TYPE=English Programs Feature

NUMBER=7-37927

TITLE=2003 WORLD FOOD PRIZE WINNER

BYLINE=Rosanne Skirble

TELEPHONE=(202) 619-2806

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Rob Sivak

CONTENT=

INTRO: Eight hundred million people go to bed hungry every night. They are the victims of war, civil conflict and natural disasters. Nearly eighty percent are women and children.

United Nations Under Secretary General for Management Catherine Bertini has spent a career on the frontlines of the battle against hunger.

Now, Ms. Bertini has been named the winner of the 2003 World Food Prize, a prestigious quarter-million dollar award established in 1986 and sponsored by a wealthy Iowa agri-businessman.

The prize honors those who've made outstanding contributions to the production, quality and availability of food in the world.

Ms. Bertini, who will receive her prize at a special World Food Day ceremony in De Moines, Iowa October 16, is being honored for her leadership in saving millions from famine and starvation as the former head of the United Nations World Food program.

In 2002 World Food Program operations reached some 72 million people in 82 countries, including some of the world's refugees and displaced persons.

Ms. Bertini spoke with VOA's Rosanne Skirble:

INTERVIEW SEGMENT: SKIRBLE/BERTINI

RS: Ms. Bertini, you were the executive director of the World Food Program for a decade from 1992 to 2002. Why do so many people go to bed hungry everyday?"

CB: "Most people who go to bed hungry are so desperately hungry that they cannot feed themselves. They can't grow enough. They can't find or buy enough food to feed their families. Hunger and poverty are interchangeable. If you are hungry you are poor. If you are poor you are usually hungry. There is a large population of people also who are hungry because they have been caught in the midst of a man-made or natural disaster. And the numbers of those people, unfortunately, have increased in the last twelve years, and they are the people who receive the maximum amount of food and other support, but they are actually the minority of the 800 million people who go to bed hungry."

RS: "Is there enough food for everyone?"

CB: "The world produces enough food for everyone. The issue is access. For those living in conflict or natural disaster, they do not have access to food. For those people who are desperately poor, they do not have access because they can not purchase or grow it."

RS: "You have been credited during your tenure as the head of the United Nations World Food Program with taking the organization from that of development assistance to a humanitarian relief organization. Could you comment on the what steps you took to make this transformation?"

CB: "The first step was (one) with which we had nothing to do, and that was the fact that the world changed after the end of the Cold War and after the demise of the Soviet Union. There were so many more local and regional conflicts in Eastern Europe, in Africa and elsewhere that there was a very, very high demand for food for people who were cut off totally from food. And, it was that demand that required the World Food Program and other aid agencies to refocus their work and to be sure that they were operating in a manner that was effective for reaching those people when they needed the food. And, WFP, which had been a bureaucratic organization directed toward helping people living in peaceful times with development aid, now had to become an agency that was fast, and very effective and would be quickly able to access needs and resource, food and then get it to the right people. So, we went through a whole process of first defining our mission, and then communicating with our donors, getting feedback from the potential beneficiaries and from those who represented them in their governments and then moving the food quickly, and the right kind of food in the right place."

RS: "Faced with such enormous challenges such as Hurricane Mitch in Latin America, drought in the Horn of Africa, floods in Mozambique, acute hunger among refugees in Kosovo and civil war in Afghanistan, how does an organization like the World Food Program go about confronting such tragedies?"

CB: "The World Food Organization prides itself we did then and I know under the executive director, Jim Morris, they do now, with being able to quickly access a need and get food to the beneficiaries.

Hurricane Mitch is a good example. I remember the president of Honduras telling me in 2001 that the one thing that he didn't have to worry about when Hurricane Mitch occurred was food. They had to worry about shelter. They had to worry about employment for people who lost their jobs. They had to worry about agriculture and replacing the crops. What he didn't have to worry about was food because the World Food Program was there within 24 or 48 hours depending on the area with food for people who had lost everything due to the floods. Why? Because first of all we already had facilities in the area and two, because we saw after many days of rain we saw that there might possibly be a flood, and we needed to be ready if there was.

In Afghanistan when people were concerned in the fall of 2001 about what would happen as a result of the war in Afghanistan and with winter coming in a mountainous area where it snows and it gets very cold, what would happen? Would the people have enough food? And the World Food Program people were so creative in terms of finding new transportation routes to get food into the country, from countries, which up until then had cut off their association with Afghanistan. We were able to open those new routes, (and) open up routes inside the country, even employing donkeys to get to hard to reach places, employing people who were called Arctic experts to be able to make sure that roads were open, even in the winter."

RS: "We've mentioned that nearly 80 percent of the 800 million people who go to bed hungry are women and children. What role can women play in channeling food to the most needy?"

CB: "Woman are the food handlers for all people. When you think about any society in the developing world and you think about who cooks, the answer is the women. Women in virtually every household are the cooks, and they are not only the cooks, they are the people who find the food. They grow it or they chop for it or they bargain for it or trade for it, or they stand in the aid line for it. Women are also the ones that go off to get the firewood, to get the water, sometimes walking hours and hours each day to bring water home for cooking, washing and so forth. The women are the ones totally invested in the family's ability to eat and invested in putting cooked food on the table for them to eat. So if our mission is to end hunger, working with women is the only option that we have in order to be effective."

RS: "Looking ahead, what do you see as the greatest challenges in delivering food to people who need it?"

CB: "The greatest challenge is to help use food in an effort to help people be able to improve their own well being over the long term. I say that because in the last ten years we have been more successful in raising the resources and delivering food to people caught in conflict or natural disaster. It has been very challenging because we have had to get food through warring factions and lines. We've had to get food across Somalia, which is normally a desert and all of a sudden has a flood. We have to get food into drought stricken places in the Horn of Africa. That, although very challenging, has been what we have done very well. What we still need to do is to convince people around the world who have the ability to influence their governments or influence other private sector entities to contribute more food and money to getting food to people who have no food because they are poor. Those people are the ones who are most at risk around the world and the ones to whom we have to devote new energy. There is so much more that can and that must be done because in the year 2003 it is unconscionable that we sit and say, 'Okay, there are 800 million hungry people. Well, that is someone else's job. I think human beings come forward when they see these natural disasters when they are covered on the radio or on the television or newspapers and they say, 'No, it is no good for people in Afghanistan to starve. It is no good for people in Iraq not to have enough food. We have to be aware of the fact that there are people in Bangladesh, in India and in Latin America and different countries through out Africa who go to bed hungry every night because they are so poor that they can not find the food. And we can do something about that."

RS: "Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in and speaking with us."

CB: "Thank you for having me."

RS: "Catherine Bertini is United Nations Under Secretary General. She is the World Food Prize Laureate for 2003. The award has no relationship to the United Nations World Food Program, which Ms. Bertini led between 1991 and 2002." (SIGNED)

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