Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on April 4th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Good evening everyone. Welcome to meeting seven of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights.

Today we will be starting our study of human rights in Ukraine and Russia. As well, we'll be hearing from the World Food Programme.

As a quick reminder to all those present in the room, please follow the recommendations from public health authorities as well as the directives of the Board of Internal Economy to remain healthy and safe.

To all those joining us virtually, please note that translation is available through the globe icon at the bottom of your screens. Let me also remind you that when there is only 30 seconds remaining in your time allotment, I will give you a warning so you know you have 30 seconds remaining.

I would like to welcome our first witness, who is joining us from Washington D.C. and has kindly agreed to take time out his busy schedule. From the World Food Programme, we have Mr. David Beasley, the executive director.

Mr. Beasley, thank you once again for taking time to join us today for our committee proceedings. I'll turn it over to you, sir. You have five minutes for your opening remarks. After that there will be questions from the members.

The floor is yours, Mr. Beasley.

[David Beasley, Executive Director, World Food Programme]

Thank you. It's great to be with you again. I always like to be there in person, of course, but with the virtual world and how many crises we have going on, I think we're all over the place, spread thinly, quite frankly. Let me get to the point.

Before Ukraine hit, we were already facing a perfect storm of conflict, climate and the economic impacts from COVID. We had seen the number of people marching towards starvation spike from 80 million to 135 million people right before COVID, and then it jumped from 135 million to 276 million people because of the economic ripple effect of COVID. Within that, you now have literally 45 million people in 38 countries knocking on famine's door as we speak.

Now this was before Ukraine, and we think it's bad enough. We were already facing fuel and food price spikes. As you can imagine, th shipping costs were spiking as well. On top of all that, when we were just starting to cut rations for people all over the world because of a lack of the funds that we needed because of this increase in prices, Ukraine compounded the situation.

The problem with Ukraine is not limited to the impact within Ukraine. It has a global impact, which we will get into. In fact, we will now see that number of 276 million go up to over 300 million in the next two months if this conflict, this war, is not brought to an end, and it will mean an additional 50 million if it does not get brought to an end within the next few months. It's going to compound catastrophe on top of catastrophe.

If you're watching the news, just like everybody is, you'll know that there are four or five million people who have already left Ukraine. You might say that they are the lucky ones. They're out of harm's way. They're being met at the borders with loving arms from strangers. People are taking them in, giving them food, and giving them shelter. However, you have 40 million people inside Ukraine who are literally in harm's way in multiple ways, not just in terms of conflict but also in terms of food security.

We're looking at an unprecedented European crisis, particularly post World War II. We've reached about a million Ukrainians inside Ukraine. We plan to scale-up this month to about 2.3 million to 2.5 million people, and next month to about four million people. We have about a $600 million operation for the first few months. We have about $160 million in hand, and we do feel pretty good about the next few hundred million. However, if we scale-up to six million people by and through June, we'll be completely out of money by the end of June.

For every person who is in harm's way and is fleeing, if we can't reach them inside a country, that means they'll be coming to the outside of the country, and we know what happens when we cannot reach people on the inside of a country. The price tag for humanitarian support is multiple times greater outside.

Now, not to get too much into the weeds inside Ukraine, but please understand—and I think the world is starting to receive this message—30% of all grain, such as wheat, is grown in Russia and Ukraine; 20% of all corn, maize, is grown inside Russia and Ukraine; 40% of all base products for fertilizers are from Belarus and Russia; and 30 million metric tonnes are now stuck in the Black Sea because of the conflict, because of the war.

Ukraine grows enough food to feed 400 million people. For 50% of our operations, we buy wheat from Ukraine. Egypt buys 85% from Ukraine. Lebanon, just two years ago, bought 80% from inside Ukraine. We're already seeing an economic ripple effect. At first, we thought that it would be primarily a pricing problem, but now, because farmers are on the front lines fighting, they are not planting. They need to be planting corn right now, maize. They need to be harvesting wheat in July and August. If they're on the front lines, obviously, they're not going to be harvesting. They're not going to be planting, and we don't have the tenders to the fields to make sure that the fertilizers are applied and so on.

We could have a supply problem, an availability problem, later this year. This is why I've been meeting with the G7 agricultural leadership to talk about what we can do to offset the potential decline of harvests around the world.

When you compound that with the droughts we're seeing in different locations around the world and particularly in China, which is having droughts as well as other issues, they're buying up as much grain as they possibly can. We're facing catastrophe on top of catastrophe, a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm.

We're already cutting rations in countries all around the world. For example, in Yemen we're feeding about 13 million inside that country, and we cut about eight million down to 50% rations, and there is a very good possibility that we'll have to cut that even further in the next two weeks ahead. That's just one example of the many countries where we are cutting.

As I have told European leaders, you must be careful. While you focus on what's coming at you from your east, you cannot completely neglect what could be coming from the south, because the Middle East and northern Africa are very fragile right now. If we neglect these two regions, you could really have a catastrophe upon catastrophe in the months ahead.

I have a lot more I could talk about, we'll say, but let me just stop right there and say thank you to Canada. You've been an extraordinary partner. Many countries are stepping up at a time like this, and Canada has really been a tremendous role model for the rest of the world to follow, so thank you very much.

I'll turn it over for questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much for your opening remarks, Mr. Beasley.

We will now open it to questions from the members. For the first round, each member has seven minutes.

The first member is Mr. Zuberi.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Beasley, for being here. I remember approximately two years ago, as I think Heather would, when you last came to our committee. That was a very eventful meeting, and you gave us good memories.

That being said, you spoke a bit about Yemen. I've been doing some research on this issue. Can you share with us what the situation is currently in Yemen with respect to famine and food and what the World Food Programme is doing to alleviate the situation?

[David Beasley]

I appreciate your mentioning Heather. I didn't want to single her out, but she has been such a great voice for the hungry around the world.

Yemen is a very difficult situation. We've just come out of the field with a new survey indicating the number of people who are in really serious trouble. Food insecurity, we expect by June, to jump from 15 million to 16 million to about 19 million, and that's with a population of about 30 million people inside Yemen, so you're literally talking about two thirds of the population who are food insecure and are struggling to get a meal on any given day.

Understand that Yemen is a country where at least 85% of its food comes from the outside. It is a terrible situation. We have about 4.5 to 5 million people whom we would say are at IPC level 4, and that's knocking on famine's door.

Because of the lack of funding, we're now cutting almost everybody at IPC level 3 and trying to reach as many as we can at IPC level 4, which means that everybody at IPC level 3 is going to be headed toward IPC level 4.

It is a very bad situation and, quite frankly, the Gulf States need to step up more because we don't have the monies we need. That is our number one problem. This is all about money, and the Gulf States are not stepping up and doing what they need to do to help take the pressure off Western donors in particular. Because of the crisis we're facing in so many different places around the world right now, if we could just get the Gulf States, particularly with oil prices being as high as they are, to help in a substantive way with the humanitarian fallout in the Gulf region, it would take incredible pressure off for us to be able to reach the shortfalls we're having in Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and I can go on and on to Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, for example.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you for that. I think that was really informative. I learned something from that, too.

Since I last heard you at this committee two years ago, a lot has happened, and COVID has hit us. Can you talk a bit about how COVID has impacted the work you do?

[David Beasley]

COVID has devastated our work around the world.

Let me just explain that very clearly. Pre-COVID, we had 135 million people in IPC 3, 4 and 5. In simple terms, that's not chronic hunger. That's a whole different number. The chronic hunger went from 650 million to 810 million people. Severe acute—in other words, marching toward starvation—went from 135 million to to 276 million people.

Here's the really bad news. Governments—major donors like Canada, United States, Germany, the EU and others—were stepping up and responding in unprecedented ways. We averted mass famine in 2020 and 2021. We've averted mass migration and destabilization of nations because you stepped up. We thought that the COVID economic ripple effect would be behind us by 2022, the economies would start coming up and the poorest countries would also start to recover. Unfortunately, COVID cycled and recycled again, continuing the economic deterioration and devastation in countries around the world.

Compound that with Ethiopia, the crisis in Afghanistan and now Ukraine, and we're actually seeing conditions that are worse right now than what we saw right before the Arab Spring in 2008 and 2011-12. The conditions are much worse.

We can actually break down which countries we're very concerned about with regards to destabilization. These are the hot spots that we really have to keep an eye on. If we don't give them attention, we could have grave consequences. Without getting into further detail....

Also not many people know, but I think you do, that we are the logistics arm for the United Nations and major NGOs. We don't just deliver food. We bring medicines. For UNICEF, WHO, and UNHCR, we are that supply chain for the systems of ships, trucks and airplanes. When COVID hit and the airline industry shut down, we actually stepped up and began delivering the COVID supplies, ventilation, PPE, testing equipment and all of these types of things, as well as passenger service for ambassadors, first-world responders, humanitarian workers—

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

In the 30 seconds that are left, I'm hoping you could speak a little bit about climate change and how that impacts famine and food. Maybe you can elaborate more in other interventions.

[David Beasley]

Yes, that would be great.

Let me touch on this real quick. Last year alone, more people displaced were by climate change than by any other factor. It was the first time ever in history. There were 30 million additional people displaced because of climate alone last year.

We're seeing more droughts, more flash flooding and more shocks than in any time period we've ever seen.

Maybe I can get more into that a little bit later.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Do we still have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

You still have about 30 seconds.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

If you would like to elaborate more in the next 30 seconds, we have a small extension.

[David Beasley]

One thing that we believe is essential, particularly in areas that have been impacted by climate change, like in the Sahel where the Sahara is moving down about a kilometre per year with all the droughts and the lack of rain, is to rehabilitate the land when the donors give us the flexibility—instead of just handing out food, but actually helping work with the beneficiaries. I say this because the beneficiaries don't want to just receive food. They actually want to rehabilitate the land and strengthen their communities.

When we can come in, rehabilitate the land, put down water systems and couple that with homegrown school meals, amazing things happen. Migration drops off the chart. Teen pregnancy and marriage rates—like of 12- and 13-year-olds—drop of the chart. Recruitment by ISIS by al Qaeda, Boko Haram and al Shabaab drops off the chart. It's absolutely remarkable.

Go to my Twitter page at @WPFChief and you can see some amazing videos about the women. The women are amazing. They are so entrepreneurial. I could show you case study after case study. When we give them water systems and they're harvesting the things necessary from water, they end up not needing our support after a couple of years.

This one woman said that they were selling into the marketplace. She had bought clothes and medicines for her children and was now paying for her son's wedding. I was sitting there just thinking, wow, this is what we wanted. This was in Chad. There are many instances like it.

I could get into the details. For example, we rehabilitated over 3.5 million acres of land. When I say “we”, I mean the beneficiaries. It was land that was not cultivatable, but because of rehabilitation and working with our donors and beneficiaries, the land is now usable. People can survive and not be vulnerable to all the shock factors.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Zuberi.

We now turn to Mr. Cooper for seven minutes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Beasley, for being here.

I want to focus on Ukraine and specifically the World Food Programme's efforts there. I saw that the World Food Programme has recently warned that 45% of the people in Ukraine, nearly half its population, are concerned about having enough to eat. It's just weeks since the beginning of Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine. Can you expand on the situation and give us a clearer picture?

Secondly, can you expand on what the World Food Programme is doing? You noted that it's provided assistance to approximately a million people, which will increase quite significantly over the next several months. I understand that assistance has been provided in places like Kharkiv and Lviv, and that food supplies have also made it into conflict zones.

I'll give you a little bit of time to speak about some of those efforts.

[David Beasley]

Thank you very much.

I've been there already three times, and I'll be back there next week. As I was saying earlier, the Ukrainians who have made it to the border, as sad as that is, are the very fortunate ones in many ways. As I stood there looking at the lines, I saw that most of the people in the lines were women with their little children. The front lines of battle are mostly men, although both men and women are on the front lines of battle. Those who are standing in line with their children are in brutal cold weather, in lines that may be a mile long, all day and all night. Again, they're the ones who are at least out of harm's way in terms of combat.

Inside, in terms of trying to reach them, Russia, as you can imagine, is not some simple army. This is a very, very powerful military campaign. It moves by the hour and by the day. We're trying to position the supplies that we need, where and when and how, but the train system is impaired. So is the trucking system. Guess where all the truck drivers are? They're on the battlefront.

So we're working through a lot of these issues. We've reached a million people. We want to scale up, as I was saying, to two and a half million, then to four million, and then to six million. Now, for every million we try to scale up, it takes $50 million to $60 million, give or take, to reach that many people on a monthly basis. You just start doing the math. If we have enough money to go through May but we don't have any more money, then we have to back down from the six million and start doing just two million a month. What happens to the other millions who are really food-insecure?

It's a very, very difficult balance. We're looking now at how much money we can get in. You don't want 40 million people going to the outside, for certain, for a multitude of reasons. We're trying to partner with the government as well as others inside the country in terms of who can do what, where, as we move supplies around.

Now, here's a couple of issues that not many people see on the surface. You know that ports are completely shut down. You can't truck enough grain outside of Ukraine to make a difference. Ports are where all the infrastructure is, so we have to deal with that. The problem is that all the silos, the big silos for the massive supply chain, are full. If the harvest comes in July and August and we haven't moved those millions upon millions of metric tonnes of grain to the outside, we, meaning the whole world, will have a massive problem in terms of the supply chain globally in the fall without major outside offsets.

There are those types of issues as well as the harvesting issues, the planting issues and attending to the crops issues over the next few months. The wheat crops were planted right before the war started. That's in the ground, although you still have fertilizer and issues like that of tending to those particular crops. We've been buying everything we can inside Ukraine to make sure it's utilized for the people inside Ukraine. The government is doing a remarkable job, as well, of reaching them. There are some places we can't get into because they have not been deconflicted. We are asking all sides, especially in the particular confrontational areas where Russia is, to deconflict so that we can move supplies in—

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Beasley, I'm sorry to cut you off. I've just got two minutes and I want you to continue with that, but you also mentioned grain silos and food storage facilities. The Ukrainian foreign minister has said that Russia is actively targeting such facilities. Are you able to speak to that?

Secondly, with respect to the World Food Programme's efforts of providing assistance in conflict areas, have those efforts been impeded by Russia? Could you elaborate on that?

[David Beasley]

I can't give you the exact number of silos and other holding facilities that have been destroyed. We're actually trying to evaluate and receive that data as we speak because it's extremely important, but that has occurred. That's number one.

Number two, obviously, where there's active combat, our ability to move supplies is severely restricted. I sent a very specific letter of request to the Russian government just last week saying that we need deconfliction here, here and here. Martin Griffiths, head of OCHA, is over there in Russia today to further that discussion and I'm looking forward to hearing back from him, probably tomorrow, and seeing where we are.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Has there been any response from the Russian government to that letter of request?

[David Beasley]

No. I've talked with them on the phone and they will hopefully respond back pretty quickly. We've got multiple avenues and we're pushing.... For example, we'll be moving a ship to Mariupol to be able to move ready rations into Mariupol. We're going to be testing every avenue that we can. I'm asking for air lifts, air drops, shipping as well as trucking and trains, so I'm going to give everybody an opportunity to say no and in multiple ways. In other words, I'm going to give them multiple opportunities to say yes in multiple ways.

Let me just make one quick comment. Eighty per cent of our operations around the world are in war zones and areas of conflict, so we know how to push and press and do what we need to do. This is a very complex and unique situation. We don't have any airspace right now. We're hoping to get some airspace, but at the same time, it's a massive military operation and we're making fluid decisions on a day-to-day basis. Obviously, when the Russian military pulls back we hopefully, along with others, will be coming in to at least supply, whether it's on a short-term, temporary basis.... But again, my biggest issue going forward, probably in addition to access, is going to be money and money.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We'll now turn to Monsieur Trudel.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Beasley, I am very happy to meet you. This is the first time I am hearing you speak. Everything you talked about is passionate.

I will continue in the same vein as my colleague. Here, in Canada and in Quebec, we are far from the conflict, but there have been a few mentions of a humanitarian corridor being opened in Mariupol, so that people can come out. That seems complicated. Russia said it would open a corridor, but the seven or eight attempts to do so have failed.

Do you know anything about that? What is so complicated, in terms of logistics, about opening a humanitarian corridor in a country at war?

[David Beasley]

I think what you just stated is pretty much the fact that we're all still struggling on this humanitarian corridor, whether it's personnel moving in or moving out, or food, medicines and other supplies moving in or out. Mariupol is still a catastrophe. I think we're all doing everything we can.

As you well know, the Security Council is in a quagmire given the situation that Russia is engaged in this war and sits on the Security Council. It's a complexity.

We look for every opportunity we can to move supplies in, in any way we possibly can. We're always thinking outside the box and we'll be doing the same thing there. We will make known at the right critical moment, when we can't reach whom we need to reach, who the problem is. I wish I had a simple, good answer for you on this one, but you realize we're all struggling.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I understand. Thank you, Mr. Beasley.

You talked earlier about the consequences countries such as Yemen and Egypt would suffer if the conflict continued.

Are there any other countries that are already in a critical situation and that could go through difficult periods if the conflict continued?

[David Beasley]

Yes, there are a minimum of about 38 countries, but let me give you a couple more examples. Syria continues to deteriorate as we speak. For Lebanon, who would have ever believed that we are now scaling up to reach 1.5 million Lebanese people—not Syrian refugees in Lebanon; we are already supporting them. Lebanon is in a crisis. I think 81% of all the wheat that Lebanon gave to its people or sold to the markets in Lebanon two years ago was from Ukraine, and maybe Russia factored into that too, so you can see.

In the Black Sea, you now have water mines all over the place, and moving cargo in and out is very seriously complex. Now, when you consider that 30% of all the grain comes from that area, you have to then realize that's 7.8 million people who are in the market for that 30% of that grain. Then you consider that 50% of our wheat comes from Ukraine, and we feed 125 million people. I'll give you a factor that's going to be really shocking: Just for the World Food Programme, the monthly increase in expensew is already $71 million. That's $850 million in increased costs based on food pricing, fuel costs as well as shipping costs. That means we'll be feeding, at a minimum, four million to five million fewer people this year. As I was alluding to earlier, in Niger we're already at 50% rations. In Chad we're reaching 50% of those who need to be reached, and those 50% we're reaching are getting only 50% rations. In Ethiopia food insecurity is going up, up, up because there are massive droughts taking place there. There's Somaliland in Somalia, and I could keep going from country to country to country.

Now, also, in your hemisphere, the western hemisphere, in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, for example, there's unprecedented flash flooding. We're seeing now, based on our surveys, four to seven times the number of people who are now considering migrating inward toward the United States border.

I call it a ring of fire now. From Central America to Africa, all the way from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, from the Sahel all the way down to the Middle East and then to Afghanistan, it's like you have a ring of fire all the way around the world. If we don't respond strategically and effectively, the whole planet is going to be engulfed. It's going to be hell on earth in the fall if we don't get ahead of this thing quickly.