WFP Logistics – we deliver

Copyright: WFP/Diego Fernandez

As the largest humanitarian agency in the world, WFP operates in more than 80 countries delivering food aid to over 100 million people a year. On any given day, WFP has 60 planes in the air, 40 ships on the high seas and 5,000 trucks on the road.  WFP maintains an unrivaled deep field presence in some of the most remote places on earth.

The breadth, scope and economy of scale of WFP’s Logistics activities allows WFP to make services available to the entire humanitarian community. Depending on the scenario, these services may be free of cost, as in cluster operations where the agency of last resort clause is enacted. However, most often they are provided on a cost basis.

WFP provides logistics services in the core functions of storage, handling and multi-modal transport with combinations of air, sea, river, road and rail. It also provides associated services that ensure commodity loss mitigation such as commodity insurance, tracking and commodity fumigation. It further facilitates these functions by alleviating logistical bottlenecks.

Depending on the location and WFP’s country presence, potential services offered by WFP to the humanitarian community include the following:

Procurement – the procurement of food commodities, non-food items (NFIs) and support equipment for emergency relief operations

Storage – storage of humanitarian relief items and support equipment at:

• global level within the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) Network
• field level, through Country Offices
• Transport – the transport of goods along the following lines:
  • global transport via air and sea
  • regional transport via air, sea, river, road and rail
  • local or in-country transport via air, sea, river, road and rail

Customs – facilitation of expedited customs clearance

Logistics coordination and information management – provision of logistics/operational coordination through:

• cargo consolidation
• cargo tracking
• information sharing and dissemination
• Logistics training – training materials currently available for logistics professionals including both technical training and skills development.