WFP chief to visit Sudan to inspect aid operations

April 24, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Josette Sheeran, the new chief of the UN World Food Programme, will visit Darfur and southern Sudan this week to view food aid activities on her first international mission as head of the world’s largest humanitarian relief organization, a WFP statement said Tuesday.

“Sudan is WFPs biggest operation in the world and it’s important that our new executive director come to view our work first-hand and to meet with some of the 5.5 million people we plan to assist this year throughout the country,” said Kenro Oshidari, WFP’s Representative in Sudan.

She is scheduled to arrive in Khartoum on Wednesday April 25, where she will meet with government officials and WFP staff before heading to North Darfur and southern Sudan.

While in North Darfur, Ms Sheeran will travel northwest to Kutum, where she will visit the Kassab camp for internally displaced people (IDP). There, she will meet women IDPs and distribute hand mills for grinding cereals. More than 22,000 IDPs receive WFP food aid at Kassab camp – about 80 percent of them women.

The next day, the WFP executive director will fly to Juba, southern Sudan, where she is scheduled to meet government representatives, including Madame Rebecca Garang, the Minister of Roads and Transport, and visit a WFP-supported school feeding programme.

The visit to Sudan is part of a three-country trip during which she will also visit Ethiopia and Chad, April 23 to April 28.

Up to April 4, Josette Sheeran, was the Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs at the US State department. She was responsible for spearheading the Administration’s economic diplomacy efforts and advancing the interests of American businesses, farmers and workers at home and abroad through global policies spanning trade, investment, finance, development, energy, telecommunications and transportation.

(ST)