OTTAWA – The United Nations food aid program uses food and supplies to bribe the male heads of some Third World countries to treat their daughters better, a UN official said last week.
Catherine Bertini, executive director of the UN World Food Program, said in many aid-receiving countries, women are at the bottom of the waiting list for help.
The program tries to involve women in assessing food aid needs and distribution, to make sure they get some of what is available. In one case, the UN agency offers cooking oil to parents who send their daughters to school. It has resulted in a sharp increase in literacy and education among girls.
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“Yes, it’s bribery,” Bertini told the United Nations world conference on women in Beijing, China, Sept. 6. “We don’t apologize for that. We are changing behavior. We are giving hope and opportunity to young girls.”
“What could be more right, more just, than for us to create a world in which women don’t eat last,” she said.
The World Food Program will receive more than $107 million from Canada this year for use in helping feed the world’s hungry. In March when it announced a 23 percent cut in its contribution to the program’s food aid budget, the Canadian government said it wanted the money to be better targeted.
Bertini said the administration of the UN program has decided that since women are the sole breadwinners in most families in Africa and Asia, it is important that women benefit from the aid.
