WFP and ZIF sign Standby Partnership Agreement

On the 17th of September 2020, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF) signed a standby partnership agreement to deploy humanitarian experts from the ZIF Expert Pool to WFP operations.

"I am very pleased that the agreement with the World Food Programme will enable ZIF to further expand its humanitarian secondments. This is an important signal for Germany's humanitarian commitment" emphasized Dr. Astrid Irrgang, Deputy Director of ZIF, who signed the agreement together with Ute Klamert, Assistant Executive Director of WFP at the German Federal Foreign Office.

WFP is the leading humanitarian organization in the fight against global hunger. The international community is committed to end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition by 2030. WFP’s efforts therefore focus on emergency assistance, relief and rehabilitation and development assistance. Two thirds of its programmes are implemented in countries affected by conflict.

ZIF supports WFP by providing standby personnel, such as for example logistics specialists and cash transfer experts, at short notice. The humanitarian experts are deployed to WFP operations for three to six months to support the work on the ground.

In August 2019, ZIF already renewed its standby partnership agreement with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Since then, five humanitarian experts have been deployed in support of OCHA field offices in Iran, Colombia, Nepal and Sudan.

In order to adequately respond to staffing requests from WFP and other humanitarian partners, ZIF is currently expanding humanitarian capacity in its Expert Pool. The deployment of humanitarian experts and the expansion of the humanitarian capacities in the ZIF Expert Pool is generously supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.