Madam Chair, honourable members and other witness guests, I am here today to share the experience that the World Food Programme had with the Canadian Armed Forces this summer as we worked to respond to the global response on the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are very grateful at WFP for the Canadian government's interest in how we're working to respond to COVID-19 in various ways. In fact, our executive director, David Beasley, spoke with your foreign affairs and international development committee last Thursday about our humanitarian work, so those of you on the committee will have heard him.
For those of you who are not familiar with WFP, we are the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting global hunger. On any day, we're feeding around 100 million people in over 80 countries. We also are the United Nations lead for logistics and emergency telecommunications.
On any given day, we are coordinating the movement of an average of 5,600 trucks, 50 ocean-going ships, 92 aircraft, and a network of 650 warehouses and six large humanitarian response depots. All of these work to deliver assistance to people living in some of the most inaccessible parts of the world.
We can only do that thanks to the strong support we get from the people and the Government of Canada, among others. Your partnership and collaboration have been critically important to WFP, and now more than ever before, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only does the world face an unprecedented health crisis, but we're also potentially confronting a looming hunger pandemic.
I know this sounds shocking, but if you look at some of the key numbers, you'll understand it. Every night, 690 million people already go to bed hungry. They are chronically food insecure. Another 135 million people are marching toward starvation. These are people who face severe food insecurity, primarily due to conflict and climate change. However, now because of the economic impact of COVID-19, a further 130 million people could also be pushed into starvation. The year 2021 remains to be immensely challenging.
The pandemic threatens the hard-won development and peace-building gains that have been achieved over decades. Without immediate, coordinated, international support, we will see increased civil unrest, rising migration and worsening conflicts.
I'm really here to pay tribute and thanks to the leadership that Canada has shown in calling for a global response to the virus. More specifically, earlier this year, WFP started an operation to provide common services and support to the humanitarian and health community as they responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this operation, WFP provided transport, storage and dispatch of partner cargo—mostly health supplies—to countries that required urgent medical equipment and other supplies to fight the pandemic.
We supported 389 different organizations with more than 1,400 passenger flights, transporting over 25,000 passengers to 68 destinations. We carried 85,000 cubic metres of cargo to 171 countries. WFP is proud of what we managed to achieve as the backbone of the logistics of the global humanitarian response.
Obviously, we could not do that on our own. At the time that we started all of this, we did not have sufficient air assets to respond to the overwhelming and increasing global demands for cargo transport, and the commercial aviation sector, as we all know, was struggling to cope.
As such, the WFP had to find another way to support its partners amidst the pandemic. That was primarily the use of military and civil defence assets in humanitarian operations, which is based on the principle of last resort. This takes place when three conditions are met: one, specific capability or asset requirement cannot be met with available civilian assets; two, foreign military and civil defence assets would help to meet that requirement and provide unique advantages in terms of capacity, availability and timeliness; and, three, the foreign military and civil defence assets would complement rather than replace civilian capacities.
Once these last-resort means were identified, the United Nations sent a request to member states asking for military and civil defence assets to be used for this operation.
I am pleased to say that Canada was among those member states that responded to the request, offering the support of the Royal Canadian Air Force. A CC-177 Globemaster and a flight crew of more than 30 people were deployed to the WFP hub in Panama in what we called Operation Globe.
For two weeks, the Royal Canadian Air Force team worked non-stop alongside the WFP team to organize a series of rotations to move health cargo from Panama to Guatemala, Honduras, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
During those two weeks, our teams worked side by side and around the clock, overcoming last-minute changes, which required an impressive amount of flexibility and co-operation from everyone involved.
This was no small task. It was the first time for many staff in both teams to work on such an operation. The learning curve was steep, but thanks to the tireless work of those on the ground, the operation was deemed a success, showing that timely action helps prevent rapid escalation of need and conflict.
Madam Chair, honourable members and guests, as the dynamics of the world continue to change, disasters continue to strike, and operating space is becoming even more crowded. It is in these spaces that understanding of the other is crucial. It is what allows us to coexist and fulfill our expected mandates and, in some cases such as this operation, even to co-operate and work together toward a common goal.
On behalf of WFP and the global humanitarian community, thank you to all of those who facilitated Operation Globe, but a special thanks to the Royal Canadian Air Force team that deployed to Panama and worked so hard alongside the WFP team. I really hope that those involved walked away from the experience with a greater understanding of each other.
In the long run, we know that investments in food security and the resilience of communities contribute to more stable and prosperous societies. The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize that we were recently awarded is a recognition of that important and crucial link between conflict and hunger and the critical role that food assistance can play in supporting the first step toward peace and stability. Now it's time for us all to stand together, to work together and stand by the world's poorest people, very often women and children, who are right at the front of that.
I thank you and hope that I can answer any questions you may have.
Madam Chair, thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak with you today.