well controlled might just a few years ago the world was on track if not to eliminate hunger and to reduce it gradually that changed in two thousand and sixteen when the number of people suffering from an empty stomach started to rise again and in several countries hunger morphed into famine how can we reverse that trend while to discuss that i'm now joined by david beasley executive director of the world food program mr beazley it's great to talk to you thank you for your time well it's good to be with you

thank you now when the news of your appointment came foreign policy magazine and road that the un put appointee of the head of the world food program to quote help stave off u.s. cuts if that was their rationale has it worked out well it has it but i came kicking and screaming into the system because i was not necessarily a un person but when i heard the facts of how bad the situation was around the world with all the conflict war and hunger coupled with the fact that the united states very well make i decided i would take the role in so i hit the ground running facing for famines facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the united nations which by the way seventy years of history here and in russia and so we were facing a catastrophic situation along with the fact that the number one donor into the u.n. system the united states was talking about cutting. all the money so who would want

that job well frankly if they persuaded you to take on that you simply had some successes already or for example of securing presence chunk of g twenty pledge show for six hundred fifty nine million dollars to relief famine in four african countries was that pledged on earth in full and how far did it go in addressing the problem well the united states is historically been a tremendous support of the world food program as has russia but the united states was giving about one point nine billion what i assume this role in everyone thought that it would go the other way zero out which would be catastrophic and in fact the united states went from one point nine billion to two point five billion in other countries as well have been stepping up in a very significant way because as i till a million my friends if you want to spend another half a trillion dollars on destabilization military operations cut the world food program we are now into

a second year of the trumpet ministration and there is still a lot of speculations about how this white house operates they set a formal and informal libraries that set in motion i know that you make no secret of the fact that you try to enlist the support of a bank or trump who serves officially as an advisor to her father how helpful was her benevolence in securing that latch well when you have a two point five billion dollars bill you're looking for every have and you can have a new you can to make certain that the president of the united states and the true decision makers on money comes out of the sit in the house and so i felt confident that if the members in the leaders in the united states had the facts before them they would not back off their multilateral commitment in the united nations as for the world food program the u.n. may need reform and no question about that but the world food program is a different operation it's about feed people keeping people alive operating emergencies and sustainable development and so you don't. states does not back down

invite we're seeing that the world food program is actually a program is bringing nations together and with all the division around the world the world food program we consider ourselves an opportunity to bridge relations so to interesting to say that because i think your agency is far more fortunate than some of the other agencies do you think perhaps they have a secret of. your success has has been your own personality or putting an american in charge i mean seriously it's a serious matter for many in the us on how crucial it is to have somebody who has that i mean the president or at least any or if he's going to do it well you've got to have the year of the leadership but you also have the right message in bringing bringing together different factions within the government around hungry starving children who could be against that well but there are lots of starving children in the palestine and yet that budget is being how well you know we're looking forward

to working through those issues as well but in the world today you can take any country of islam into say to the united states a country that of us you know very well the democrats or republicans have been five hundred on everything and so we brought the leaders of the democrats and the republicans together around hungry children and they laid aside their differences in made peace and brought forward major some successes for the world food program but we want to take the same concept using food as a weapon of peace a weapon of unification as we do that with different tribes children from different ethnic groups trying to bring different factions together terrorist groups like isis is now tied in a book rahman al shabaab they want to use food as a weapon of starvation a weapon of war or weapon of vision we see food as a weapon of opportunity of development sustainable bill is success from not just bringing in the music together but bringing nations together and so now correct me if i'm wrong but i thing even after six. during that on the part of the united

states the problem before famines remains very very accurate we are still talking about millions of people on the bring of not just starvation but on the brink of death and i heard you say that the only two solutions are number one getting enough funding to feed the people and number two stopping the wars which one of these you find more realistic more achievable at this point of time the only answer is through starvation and hunger the scolding up now for the first time in the years because in the wars. is a heck of a problem the international community in the world has dropped the hunger really over the past hundreds of you particularly in the last twenty five years even though the population of the world went from five point three billion to seven point five billion the hunger a drop from a billion to seven hundred seventy seven million but no hunger rates going up to eight hundred fifteen million that's hungry people me very hungry people on the

brink of they don't know where their next meal is now one hundred and nine million in this all the escalation is all because of man made conflict absolutely that's why i'm asking you mr beazley since you seem to believe that it is possible to those wars. peace is an aspiration for all of us but i'm sure in your daily line of work you deal with the green reality rather than aspirations what makes you believe given that what you just said the. turnaround in the statistics very dispiriting turn around in the statistics what makes you believe that the international community all of a sudden they will be able to you know change its mind and when they are told that complex well there's still a dream in my heart that the hopes of people every person i meet i tend to think there is a desire in their heart to have peace and i think sometimes. in diplomacy circles we tend to talk about the little things that distract us versus the bigger

things that can attract us and i think the united nations in my opinion has not done the job that it should have done in the past twenty thirty years but i think you have new leadership in the united nations i think you have new leadership around the world this really looking to find paths of opportunity but until we have those conflicts resolved we have to have money in the world food program and then we have to have access so yes we were able to avert famines the four famines that we faced faced in the past couple of years and face right now we were able to avert the famine but the number of hungry people went up and we're still facing famine in several of these countries where yemen is a very desperate situation somalia with the drought and the complexities there and then you get of course a south sudan is nothing but warfare and then northeast nigeria which is ethnic tribal conflict based upon isis and al qaeda. and then you bring in the drought in

the lake chad basin it's a terrible situation and what exactly can the international community do about that because from what i know they're trying to miss ration is also intending to cut its funding of the peacekeeping operation so i assume that's not going to be easy to realize your own vision well i think you'll see realignment as the peacekeeping but that will have to work through itself within the international community but i do think the international players have got to step up in a way they have not done before for example each country will come into a country as a donor and have their program siloed. i have been saying to the international community these very fragile communities like in the greater sahara larry we need to come in with a strategic comprehensive holistic approach revive sustainability sustainable development resilience for example in the united nations world food programme we believe that every single person this enabled body to know who's receiving food they ought to be in

a community development improvement properly but for that you have to solve the number one issue which is meet conflict he mentioned the word famine and then the way to yemen and i want to see is that there's a potential chalk specifically about this country because i think it's stands out as a as a confluence of disasters or heard you say that you've been trying to raise the issue of the saudi contact with the trumpet ministration did you find it responsive yes it's been interesting know what and see that the international community has has come together to help bring about a change in the saudi in the sort of coalition by that you mean then the plants that they may just recently offer additional aid and easing out of there saying well you know two or three things number one the saudi led coalition in the blockade was creating catastrophic situation and so lack of money lack of access was a huge issue but we really are see the sea change in the saudi led coalition in terms

of the blockade and they exist now we've got to get access on the ground with these and so we're working with the who these and all parties involved to make certain that we have the money we need and then the access we need on the ground so we've got to get the food in from the air in the sea and then on the ground is so we're making tremendous headway but the blockade set us back quite a bit so we're looking at seven point four million people literally literally on the brink of starvation that actually is about eight point four million people of the total population of twenty nine million in the in the are on the brink of starvation. if we don't get the excess and the food we need with the fuel that we need to be able to move the supplies the food the medicines you going to have a catastrophic event there now there are lots of international organizations national governments that can down the saudi way of waging a war on yemen but it doesn't seem to change. to have changed their behavior much

now i notice something about your own personal thout i think you like to practice a lot of positive reinforcement do you think that me get the better traction but the saudis we are in my opinion we're seeing a positive turn in the right direction with the saudis in the saudi the coalition i have been traveling to the middle east lately had very positive meetings and trying to appeal to the heart that you know these innocent victims of this conflict the children they don't deserve this this is a nation that is now in ruins and we need to step up as i've told the saudis and others if you're not willing to stop the war and you have a moral obligation to make certain that the humanitarian fallout the consequences are met and no child should be left behind in this country and so mr mean i'm sorry for interrupting but i used to know the first person to tell them that and yet. they seem to have been very very little change in the way more was carried out of

the last year i can't explain or justify that because i haven't been in this position but they tend to believe that they would actually listen to you as opposed to not listening to anyone else because we're already seeing results we're seeing a major shift in some of the campaigns with regards to air campaigns and other campaigns and hospitals and other facilities and the poor we're seeing them choose to step up now monetarily we're seeing that step up in terms of providing access within the country that they have control we're seeing them open up the port in terms of the barricade it was so we're seeing some very significant positive movement right now and we're actually seeing some positive movement with huet these now so we're hopeful that food may be the weapon the school brings some peace in this country but let's see well let's keep our fingers crossed for sure we have to take a very short break now but for. we'll be back in just

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