ABSTRACT
The debate can be confined to the developmental function of the WFP. In respect of its emergency function, there is no need for a siInilarly critical examination. During recent years, the WFP has developed into an exceptionally effective organisation precisely for what the donors need most: the logistical servicing of their large, bilateral food relief programmes, from the initial stage of procurement through international and national transport up to the delivery to the distribution authority. There are a few issues pending mostly concerning the borderlines of the WFP mandate: the responsibility for needs assessment (which needs to be much improved) at one end of the spectrum, and the responsibility for distribution to the final beneficiaries, at the other. However, these are issues more of UN inter-agency turf (the WFP contending with FAO in the former case and with UNHCR in the latter), than of substance. On the whole, the function of the WFP as a provider of emergency food logistics is so logical and coherent, and its performance so satisfactory, that ifWFP did not exist, an organisation would have to be set up, and it would probably not look very different from the current WFP Logistics Division.
