THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
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During her visit, she met Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; Agriculture Minister Elena Skrynnik; Emergency Situations Minister Sergey Shoigu; Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko, and Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin. Sheeran traveled to the Yaroslavl Region where as part of the program prepared by the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, she was shown food processing enterprises and educational institutions involved in a school meals program.

In these meetings, they discussed the dynamically evolving relations between Russia and the WFP and prospects for further cooperation in the formation of a new architecture of global food security, including achieving one of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – to halve the number of hungry people in the world – as well as fleshing out the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative adopted by over 30 countries and IOs in the G8 Summit framework. In this context Russian long-term donorship issues were deliberated at length, along with future joint projects like school meals programs, fortified foods production and building food crisis response capacity.

The parties emphasized the importance of strengthening cooperation between the WFP and the relevant Russian agencies, in particular, the Emergency Situations Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture. With both of these ministries memorandums of cooperation were signed during the visit for a period of three years, in whose framework it is proposed to specify the content of the collaborative use of Russian contributions and donor support for the WFP.

A thorough exchange of views took place on a number of current and planned WFP operations, including those in countries receiving Russian aid channeled through the WFP.

The WFP leadership praised Russia’s work during its 2009 stint as chair of the WFP’s Executive Board, marked by some definite achievements. The Executive Board had endorsed important decisions to expand the donor base and to diversify relief operations. As a result, despite the ongoing global financial crisis, in 2009-2010 stable funding was provided for WFP projects.

For our part, we noted that we had taken and were planning a number of further measures to boost our cooperation with the WFP. Starting in 2010, our annual voluntary contribution to the Program Fund will be raised to $20 million, while maintaining the practice of making one-time extraordinary donations (a reserve of about $10 million is set aside for this purpose) that will keep our donor contribution at the level of about $30 million per year, which we de facto reached in 2009 already. According to mutual understanding, priorities for putting Russian donor contributions to use remain the countries of the CIS and the Eurasian region adjacent to Russia, especially Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, as well as the DPRK and Afghanistan. For our part, we also reaffirmed our readiness to provide assistance to some of the most vulnerable African states in terms of food security, particularly Ethiopia and countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

We reiterated our willingness not to limit cooperation with the WFP exclusively to humanitarian food supplies, but to strive towards cross-sectoral projects in the field of development assistance. In particular, this relates to joint action in the CIS countries that are experiencing chronic food shortages.

In this regard, we reaffirmed our preparedness to soon launch a pilot project for school meals in Armenia with a view to its extension to other CIS countries with an acute need for such assistance, including, perhaps, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

WFP expressed interest in exploring the issue of stockpiling humanitarian supplies on Russian territory as well as Russian products in regional WFP warehouses, including the central logistics base in Brindisi (Italy). Given the recent experience of the humanitarian operation in Haiti, Josette Sheeran voiced interest in the furtherance of the prospects of engaging Russia's transport capacity, above all, that of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry to support logistics functions carried out by the WFP for the entire UN system, as well as Russia's aviation system ‘Global Reach.’

WFP reiterated its previously expressed interest in establishing the production in Russia and from Russian raw materials of high tech food products (including fortified high-energy bars and biscuits, nutritious pastes for young children, etc.).

During the visit a Russian-language version of the official WFP website was launched. This demonstrates the growing importance the WFP attaches to developing cooperation with our country.

The visit of the WFP Executive Director to Russia has laid a good basis for and can spur the expansion and significant diversification of Russian cooperation with the Program. Interested agencies have begun studying the envisaged areas of cooperation with a view to arriving at concrete results during this year, primarily in terms of increasing Russia's donation to the WFP and of actively consolidating the position of Russian suppliers of goods and services in the food assistance market.