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World Food Programme - India the food aid arm of the United Nations |
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Future India Country Programme (2003 - 2008) The current India Country
Programme is due to end on 31 December 2002. The second generation New Country Programme has
been approved. WFP’s Country Strategy for 2003-2008 will focus on the
vulnerable groups, especially women and girls, who live in the most food
insecure districts in the least developed states of India. India accounts for
a quarter of the world's undernourished people. Around half the children in
India are undernourished and stunted. Micronutrient deficiencies like
anaemia, Vitamin A and iodine deficiencies are highly prevalent among
pregnant women. Despite strong economic growth (approximately 6 percent) and
achieving self-sufficiency in cereals at the national level, human
development indicators in India have shown little improvement. India still
accounts for a quarter of all chronically food insecure people in the world.
About every second child below five years is malnourished, 33 percent are
born with low birth weight and 69 out of 1,000 die before the age of one.
While female literacy at the national level stands at a poor 43 percent, in
the most insecure areas, female literacy is at a distressing 16 percent.
India's Human Development Indicator (HDI), Gender Development Indicator (GDI)
and Gender Empowerment (GEM) score, at 0.55, 0.53 and 0.24 respectively and
are only slightly higher than the South Asian averages and are well below the
averages for developing countries as a whole. Moreover, India remains a
"low-income food-deficit" country with a per capita income of 430
US dollars a year. India already has a unique set of
national food assistance programmes. However, these programmes are often not
reaching the vulnerable sections of the population and are not very effective
in the most food insecure areas. WFP will adopt an area-based strategy that
can effectively address the weakness in the local level delivery of the food
assistance programmes. This is in line with the Government and United Nations
Development Assistance Framework’s (UNDAF) agenda of decentralization. By
demonstrating successful development models, WFP aims to leverage policies
and resources for hungry people and assist the Government in making their
food assistance programmes more effective. Efforts will be made to
increasingly match WFP food aid with national resources, both food and
non-food, so that WFP inputs can gradually be scaled down. The new approach was evolved over
a two-year period of extensive vulnerability analysis and mapping (VAM), and special sector reviews on food
for education, nutrition support for women and
children and food security in tribal
and natural disaster prone areas. This was followed by a policy review mission that looked
into the strategic role of WFP in India. The Country Programme will be
synchronized and harmonized with the United Nations Development Assistance
Framework (UNDAF) and the Government of India’s
Five Year Planning.
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