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Finland grants €32m to WFP for 2018-2021

Published : 02 Mar 2018, 01:23

Updated : 02 Mar 2018, 08:21

DF Report

A Syrian Kurdish child smiles as holding bread at the countryside of the Kurdish-controlled Afrin city, northern Syria, on Feb. 8, 2018. File Photo Xinhua.

Finland has allotted 32 million euros to the World Food Programme (WFP) as core support for 2018 to 2021, said a government press release on Thursday.

“Because of the prolonged conflicts and climate change, the number of hungry people in the world has unfortunately started to rise again. WFP has a key role in combating hunger. This multiannual core support enables the organisation to plan its operations in a way that is more timely and cost-efficient,” said Foreign Trade and

Development Minister Anne-Mari Virolainen.

The WFP, a wing of the United Nations, is one of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations, which helps approximately 80 million people a year in about 80 countries.

The UN agency employs more than 14,000 people, about 90 per cent of whom work in the recipient countries.

The WFP supplies food aid in emergency situations and in development cooperation the focus is on nutrition, especially that of mothers and children.

The programme’s priorities include nutrition of women during pregnancy and of children up to the age of two. Later on, children receive food aid from it especially through school meals. The WFP has been running food aid programmes in schools around the world for more than 50 years now.