Distinguished Mr.Chairman,

Dear Mr.Executive Director,

Esteemed Delegates,

This year the world celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the UN. The UN and its family was created to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. Today we are facing another globe threat the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. This unprecedented large-scale public health crisis with severe economic and social impacts on vulnerable people and communities has provoked a sharp global increase, including in demand for WFP services. Only through united actions we can put a barrier to the pandemic and, as stated in the UN Charter, “employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples”.

1. The rapid spread of coronavirus has already affected more than 51 million people in all countries and still threatens millions of lives, particularly those, who are food insecure and vulnerable by the effects of conflict and other disasters. Humanitarian crises have become larger in scale, longer in duration and more complicated in scope. Hunger levels are on the rise again.

In this regard once again I would like to thank the Executive Director David Beasley for his leadership and the entire WFP team for the dedicated work, prompt and effective assistance to those in most need under COVID-19 pandemic.

It particularly refers to the joint activities with the other UN Sister Agencies under the Covid-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan.

2. In these challenging circumstances Russia has increased levels of financing different WFP's project activities, the contribution level of which has already exceeded the 60 million USD mark. This figure does not include our debt swap agreements and the in-kind donations of the Russian cargo vehicles as part of the on-going project on re-equipment of WFP’s Global trucks fleet. In recent months, the Government of the Russian Federation has adopted a number of decrees to allocate in 2020 contributions to the WFP fund in support of its humanitarian operations in Syria (20 million USD), African states: Djibouti, Somalia, Sierra Leone and the CAR (10 million USD) and released the multi-year contributions for school feeding projects in Armenia in 2019-2023 (18 million USD), Tajikistan in 2020-2023 (11.2 million USD), Cuba and Nicaragua in 2020-2023 (10 million USD).

3. Referring to the long-running topic of preparation towards the UN Summit on Food Systems 2021 in my capacity as a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Summit I’d like to emphasize once again the importance of more active involvement of the WFP and its leadership along with the well-coordinated approach by all three Rome Based Agencies in the preparatory process and practical input in the future Summit agenda.

In particular, under the Action Track 5 anchored by WFP shall not only showcase best-practices examples. We’d like to see more examples of WFP’s concrete contribution, including through country teams and programmes, to humanitarian response to the current emergencies in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Nigeria and Sahel. It’s also important to draw attention to the needs of providing more international humanitarian assistance in the current situation of  the deepening global hunger crisis due to conflicts, climate change and Covid-19 pandemic.

And concluding, I’d like to underline that only strict observance of the principles of neutral and unbiased provision of humanitarian assistance by the Programme management and Member States is key to its successful interaction with both donors and recipient countries.

Thank You!