Sure. We could actually spend hours on that. It's very important, because no longer are we just bringing in commodities in humanitarian short-term emergencies. We're now doing cash-based transfers. We're the world's largest in the cash-based transfer system. We now provide a little bit less than $2 billion in cash-based transfer systems.
The way we do that is quite remarkable in itself; I don't know how much time we'll have to get into that. Whether you're doing cash-based transfers or whether you're doing commodities, having the monitoring systems in place is critical for assessing and monitoring. We run into this every single day. You can imagine certain places, particularly in complex war areas, where opposition forces don't want you to have access. They want to be able to deliver the food. Of course, what can happen with that? We're like, “No. We don't do that. Here's the standard. We're neutral. We will feed all innocent people of any region. We don't care. Any other questions?”
In Yemen we've run into issues. In Syria we might run into issues, or in places like South Sudan or Nigeria or Somalia or DRC. Each place is different. We have systems in place to minimize those risks. I mean, we're not in the nicest areas in the world. We're in the toughest places in the world, areas fraught with corruption and disintegration of the normal laws of transparency, rule of law, etc. Our teams put in the monitoring and put what we need in place. My teams understand; when they suspect anything, immediately they bring it to the attention of donors and let them know, because what you're going to run into is this: How do we react when we find these types of problems, and what systems do we have in place to minimize that risk?
With the cash-based transfer systems, for example, we have now created an entire new division on enterprise risk. When you're putting out a couple of billion dollars in cash, for example, it's about how we do it and where we do it. We use biometrics now, whether it's eye-scanning or fingerprinting, and everyplace we go we integrate this new technology.
When I arrived, there were a couple of things I was a little shocked about in the UN system. I never was inside the UN system. That was why I was a little bit amazed that I ended up taking this role, because I always thought the UN was not as effective as it could be. It's not, but it was a lot better than I thought it was. I was, “Here's where the UN ought to be, and here's where I thought it was”; I think it was somewhere in between.
The World Food Programme is a remarkable operation. I mean, they get it done. The two things, two areas, that concerned me were the lack of digitization in the UN system and gender parity. I was just shocked that the UN was still having the discussion about gender parity in the year 2017, when I arrived. I was like, “Really? You're still talking about this?”
At the World Food Programme, we like to think that we're the leader in women's empowerment. We use the cash-based transfer system to substantially increase and improve women's opportunities in communities. In the commodity field, where we use food for cash, for assets, and things like that, such as in the Sahel, when we work with the women, you can be assured that food goes where it needs to go. The women will make sure that their little girls and little boys get the food.
When we integrate biometrics and digitization, we find there's a saving of between 5% and 35%. It eliminates duplication. You can imagine that if you're in a country with a million refugees, and you don't have enough money to give everyone full rations, I don't care what; every mother's going to look for a way to get more rations, and you don't blame them. But authenticity, integrity of the systems—we put the monitoring systems in place.
I can tell you from experience that when we deal with the women, they make sure they take that money and they buy the right food and they get it to the children. We have established an app that we're trying in certain places. In Lebanon, for instance, the old way was to just bring in food. You have a million and more refugees inside Lebanon. We came in and established 500 stores. The women, primarily Palestinian refugees, will come in and get the fingerprint ID and go into a store. One-third of the food they buy is produced locally, which helps the local economy. One-third is processed locally, which helps the local economy. One-third comes from imports.
We take the opportunity to leverage the dollar to maximize the benefits for dignity and empowerment of the families, as well as to try to improve the economics of an already very difficult situation for the hosting country, in order to minimize the burden upon them. Look at Lebanon and Jordan and the burden they've shouldered in the last few years. We cannot afford for Jordan or Lebanon to collapse. Turkey, of course, has taken millions of refugees.
We're working to improve the systems in place all the time because institutional integrity is critical. When you're feeding that many people in that many places, you're going to run into issues. There's always someone trying to beat the system somewhere. When we find it, we ask, “What happened? Why didn't we know about it beforehand? What systems change do we need to put in place?” It is that kind of thing.