Korea should continue its support for food assistance in Afghanistan, the United Nation’s World Food Program country director Claude Jibidar said, calling on leaders and citizens to uphold their humanitarian commitment to the underprivileged region.

Jibidar, the head of the WFP Afghanistan Office in Kabul, visited Korea from Oct. 22-24 to raise awareness about the food shortage problems in Afghanistan, and to make a pitch for more Korean support. He met with officials from Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Assembly, and spoke to university students in Seoul.

With more than 20 years on the front lines of U.N. humanitarian missions, Jibidar has been to some of the most far-flung, impoverished and dangerous places in Africa, Asia and Europe.

“This work is special because you know at the end of the day, you have been successful not only for yourself, but for a large number of people,” Jibidar said in an interview with The Korea Herald.

“When you look at a South Sudanese woman holding a baby in one hand and a bag of food in the other, without talking, you can see in her eyes how thankful she is.”

“We are also accountable to our children in 10 to 20 years’ time. Should we fail we will have to explain to them why we were not able to overcome this issue. We cannot close our eyes,” he added. 

The WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian agency, has been fighting hunger worldwide since 1961 and aims to “give food where needed and save lives from wars, civil conflicts and natural disasters.” It is also involved in a wide range of community-building efforts.

In association with the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, as well as governments, NGOs, and corporations, the WFP reaches more than 80 million distressed individuals in 75 countries a year.

“The biggest challenge is enabling those affected people to produce the food they need self-sufficiently,” Jibidar said. There is also a host of other factors ― climate change, security threats, energy crises, demographic structure and political developments ― that play into the WFP’s “Zero Hunger Challenge” equation.

Despite improvements in the food security situation in countries like China and India thanks to strong state support, billions are still displaced on account of armed conflicts or natural disasters, Jibidar said.

In West Africa today, millions face food insecurity due to the Ebola outbreak; civil wars and genocides that swept across much of Syria and Iraq have left millions homeless and stateless.

Jibidar said that although the links between global climate change and food production are not scientifically established, there are many “anecdotal” cases of food production having been negatively impacted in certain areas.

“In the whole Saharan region of West Africa, the desert has advanced and encroached on the cultivated lands for the last 30 years. There is less land available for farming. The invasion of locusts has also become rampant,” he said. In Afghanistan, the frequency and severity of natural calamities, such as flooding and landslides, have intensified.

The WFP’s painstaking efforts have paid off as the number of people facing food insecurity worldwide has dropped from 900 million a decade ago to 850 million. “But the problem is far from being over,” he said.

Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries after decades of foreign invasions and intervention, is in the midst of reinventing its history. Despite the ramshackle economy, society and polity, Jibidar said, “Afghanistan can do very well given a bit of stability.”

Jibidar called attention to the country’s strong agricultural base, with some of the world’s finest pomegranates, grapes, apricots, melons, nuts and wheat grown on its harsh mountainous terrain. “The problem is that the crops are not doled out to the population but reaped for outbound sale,” he explained. The country yields large quantities of opium despite government and international efforts to weed out the industry.

“The foremost challenge facing Afghanistan is political instability. The last 40 years of escalating violence has internally displaced 770,000 people and created 2.5 million refugees. These are people totally dependent on food assistance.”

The Taliban insurgency and other ethnic clashes have resurfaced in Helmand Province in the south and Nangarhar Province in the east; the withdrawal of U.S. troops starting in 2012 has led to greater security threats while limiting access to certain areas for the WFP. Currently, a government of national unity is being formed under the democratically elected President Ashraf Ghani, Jibidar said.

Jibidar underscored the “strategic partnerships” that the WFP has established with international conglomerates alongside local small and medium-sized companies. LG Electronics, DHL, MasterCard, PostNL, the Boston Consulting Group and Michael Kors, among others, have provided funding and assistance for corporate social responsibility initiatives. The Itaffaq factory in Kabul produces “high-energy biscuits” ― fortified with vitamins and minerals and made with local ingredients ― which are fed to displaced people, refugees and schoolchildren.

“Afghanistan must not be forgotten,” Jibidar said. “A lot was invested in Afghanistan, if we stop now, all of our efforts up to this point will be in vain. Planning and action must be long-term driven. That’s what development is about.”

Jibidar thanked Korea for its charitable contributions and assured it that the WFP is making the “best possible use of the resources” it has offered.

“Korea has greatly helped Afghanistan not only through the WFP but through various channels of bilateral cooperation in infrastructure development, technology transfers and administrative capacity-building vis-a-vis the Afghan government.”

“The solutions have to be developed at the national level and Korea is an exemplary example of national solutions being worked out,” Jibidar said. “The first lesson from Korea’s experience is that any successful initiative has to bring onboard everyone, including the government, which has to be in the lead.”

“And the community has to be fully involved in the conception, planning, implantation and monitoring of the scheme. Secondly, the process cannot be rushed, and has to be sustained and revisited,” he stressed.

By Joel Lee (joel@heraldcorp.com)