Protection in Practice: Food Assistance with Safety and Dignity

This book highlights the impact of providing food and nutrition assistance on the protection of people in need. The premise is simple: for hungry, crisis affected people – including women, minority groups, children and the elderly – the way WFP provides food assistance is critically important to their safety and dignity.

Some of the stories in the following chapters – not just of hunger, but of insecurity for millions – are truly heart-wrenching: women being raped while collecting firewood, sick and elderly people having food rations stolen, and people being denied assistance because of their ethnicity. No single agency can overcome these kinds of injustices alone. We must rally communities, nations and other organizations to work together in order to protect the dignity and safety of those in need.

As this book illustrates, this is a learning process for WFP. The authors are independent and were given free rein to observe, interview and draw their own conclusions. Only by learning from the past can we do better in the future. It is my hope that the lessons learned in this book will be shared beyond WFP so that we can all be part of building a more hopeful, food secure and safer future for people in need.