Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. I’m honoured to be here today as a representative of the United Nations World Food Programme, a voluntarily funded organization whose work has so often been made possible by the generosity of the people of Canada. Canada is a key par

Foreign Affairs committee  Certainly. I'm just about done. The stakes are high. To stop the cycle of sectarianism and violence, the basic needs and rights of Iraq’s population must be met. Food security is security, and the two should not be separated. Thank you very much.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, very much. The map that you have in front of you will show three distinct areas. The top area is the Kurdish area that we've just spoken about, where we have easy access. I say that I know roughly 95% of what is going on there. From Baghdad in the south we have quite

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll speak to this one. We run a very coordinated response. There is something called a “rapid response mechanism”, which is a conglomeration of UN agencies and NGO partners who, when we know that new places are open for access or we have new areas of displacement, provide a coor

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. I think it's easier for me to talk in 12-month figures. We need over $420 million U.S. to run our operations in Iraq for the year of 2015. We have received about $200 million of that. It costs us around $26 million each month to run the assistance. We provide three k

Foreign Affairs committee  I have not heard of that happening. That is probably something UNHCR could speak to better than I can for the World Food Programme. I have never heard of that, but I bow to Emmanuel on that one.

Foreign Affairs committee  The contribution from Saudi Arabia was $500 million, which was made for only Iraqi IDPs, and only for Iraqis inside Iraq. So we could not use it for the small number of Iraqis who had crossed the border and become refugees. I think that's quite an important distinction to make. I

Foreign Affairs committee  That was the result of an assessment mission that we sent through these three southern governorates. When we said that the structures were not in place, I think Emmanuel made it very clear earlier that most of the displaced people are not in camps. They're dispersed amongst fami

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. We work very closely with the Food and Agriculture Organization. We are both within the food security cluster. That is, we rely heavily on FAO, particularly for the agriculture. Iraq is mainly a cereal-growing area; it's wheat. Most of the wheat goes into

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm not sure it will be entirely self-sufficient. It is a very hot climate, as any of you who have been there in the summer know. They are large wheat and rice producers. I don't expect the rice production to be impacted, because that takes place in the southern governorates, b

Foreign Affairs committee  I think we are all in agreement that the biggest challenge we have is getting access to the people who need us the most. I've been very concerned about the situation of the people in the governorates controlled partially or fully by ISIL. This is a country that has two or three

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have the map.

Foreign Affairs committee  The map that I have here, you'll see that we're looking at the shading of the maps. They're both in an amber colour, a sandy kind of colour. The one here that I have shows how many people we actually reached over the course of January. Then if you go in here, this will show you w

Foreign Affairs committee  Though only parts of it. So when you have a look at the red, that's a place called Hit, where we have not been able to get into but in other areas of the governorate we can reach them.

Foreign Affairs committee  As I said, it depends very much on the situation on any given day. It's not as if every day you can go to Amerli or those places. We give the implementing partner the liberty and the freedom to go when they feel it is safe.