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My name is Dina Esposito and I am the Director, Office of Food for Peace in the US Agency
of International Development. The office of Food For Peace is an office that provides
international humanitarian food assistance to hungry people all over the world and we
are the largest provider of humanitarian food assistance in the world.
We have a budget of about one point seven billion dollars and we provide food aid to
refugees, to population displaced by conflict, floods, droughts, and other forms of disasters,
globally. We served last year more than fifty million people in more than forty-five countries.
Food For Peace provides its resources in two different ways. We provide food from American
farmers. Grains, legumes, oil... as well as specialized food products nutritious foods
that combat malnutrition. And, increasingly we are focused on helping vulnerable children
under the age of two, pregnant and lactating women, with very special products.
We Are also providing cash resources in the form of grants to our partners, who in turn
can buy food locally and regionally, closer to the victims of these disasters. As well
as vouchers to persons who can go to their neighborhood market to buy the food that they
need. This is very important, these cash programs now. Increasingly we are facing urbanized
refugee populations. We are very focused on providing assistance to Syrian refugees. They
are in middle income countries and so increasingly we are asking for resources that allow us
to serve those populations through these kinds of either cash/voucher programs or through
local and regional procurement.
Other areas that we're really interested and concerned about are drought effected areas
in the Horn of Africa, and in the Sahill. We had a famine in Somalia two years ago,
major drought int he Sahill. Tens of millions of people were affected. And these are areas
of great concern to us, so we'll continue to be focusing on those areas as well as monitoring
the situation inside Syria, as well as needs globally.
With regards to Syria, I did want to also mention that in spite of the conflict, we're
serving four million people inside Syria in both government controlled and opposition
held areas and we do provide assistance based on need and not based on locality. And, so
we're really trying to reach as many people as we can across the conflict zones. So we
will continue to focus in the coming year in-particular on that crisis.