New World Food leader

Pleased to note that Ertharin Cousin (right) has been appointed Executive Director of the United Nations' World Food Programme. Based in Rome, Italy, and employing 10,000 persons, the Programme is the globe's largest anti-hunger agency. (credit for 2011 photo by Giulio Napolitano of the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization)
Especially pleased to note that Chicago-born Cousin, who comes to the position after serving 2 years as the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, is a 1982 alumna of the University of Georgia School of Law. Previous posts have included leading post-Hurricane Katrina efforts for a U.S. anti-hunger organization, Feeding America, as well as positions at the Democratic National Committee and in the White House.
This April, Cousin will succeed another American, Josette Sheeran, who will become Vice President of the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.

On November 6

On this day in ...
... 2006 (5 years ago today), U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Jacques Diouf appointed Josette Sheeran (right), then serving as the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, to become the new Executive Director of the World Food Programme. (prior posts here and here) Her webpage elaborates:

As leader of WFP, Ms. Sheeran manages the world's largest humanitarian agency, which provides food assistance to more than 105 million people in 75 countries – 3.8 in Darfur alone – including victims of war and natural disasters, orphans and families affected by HIV/AIDS, and children in poor communities.

(photo credit) Sheeran had worked in the State Department's economic diplomatic corps for 2 decades, had served as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, and, before that, was managing editor of the Washington Times.

(Prior November 6 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

But technology, innovation and even resources are not enough. Defeating hunger and malnutrition requires political resolve. It requires leaders who will stand up and say, 'Not on my watch.'

-- Josette Sheeran (above right), Executive Director of the World Food Programme, a U.N. entity. The quote is from Sheeran's CNN.com op-ed based entitled "You have the power to end hunger" -- an op-ed based on a "TED talk" that Sheeran gave in Scotland. The message is particularly timely given current, tragic news about famine in Somalia.

"Do more." costs more

In the United States, criticism of the United Nations is old news. For years critics have drummed the "Do more." beat, urging the 63-year-old international organization to be more efficient, more effective, to keep the peace and feed the poor, here, there, and everywhere. A number of recent articles underscore an obvious response:
"Do more." costs more.
The Washington Post's Colum Lynch reported that the United Nation has just

presented its top donors with a request for nearly $1.1 billion in additional funds over the next two years -- boosting current U.N. expenses by 25 percent and marking the global body's highest-ever administrative budget ...

Lynch attributed the increased to "Bush administration demands for a more ambitious U.N. role around the world," with particular reference to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan/Darfur.
And as for those U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, there's this report from Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times:

The force, a joint mission of the African Union and the United Nations, officially took over from an overstretched and exhausted African Union force in Darfur on Jan. 1. It now has just over 9,000 of an expected 26,000 soldiers and police officers and will not fully deploy until the end of the year ....
Even the troops that are in place ... lack essential equipment, like sufficient armored personnel carriers and helicopters, to carry out even the most rudimentary of peacekeeping tasks. Some even had to buy their own paint to turn their green helmets United Nations blue ...

Nor is it just peacekeeping operations that are in dire straits. The Los Angeles Times' Tracy Wilkinson reported that rising food and fuel prices have spurred another U.N. agency to declare a global food emergency:

The World Food Program called on donor nations for urgent help in closing a funding gap of more than $500 million by May 1. If money doesn't arrive by then, Executive Director Josette Sheeran [left] said in a letter to donors, the WFP may be forced to cut food rations 'for those who rely on the world to stand by them during times of abject need.'

Official U.S. response? Despite linkages between some U.N. programmatic weaknesses and the strength of U.S. demands, in the Post article Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States' Permanent Representative to the United Nations, criticized the ballooning budget:

'I want to have a Ferrari, but if I can't afford it I would have to take something else or defer' additional spending .... 'There have to be trade-offs; there has to be savings from reforms.'