UN Humanitarian Response Depot for West Africa to be sited in Accra

Government and the World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to locate the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) in Accra to serve the West African Sub-Region. The decision to locate the UN Humanitarian Depot in Accra makes Ghana a key partner in the humanitarian logistics chain, delivering sustenance and succour in the world, which is overburdened with several avoidable conflicts. Signing on behalf of the Government, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Minister of Foreign Affairs and NEPAD, underscored Ghana's commitment to a continued collaboration with the WFP in order to make the Humanitarian Response Depot a reality. "Our aim is to assist the WFP to respond promptly to multiple disasters on the scale of the South-East Asian Tsunami; the drought in Niger; the famine in Darfur; the Pakistani earthquake or the effect of land slide in the Philippines," he said. Nana Akufo-Addo said Ghana's choice was an indication of the confidence that the international community reposed in the country as an area of peace and stability in a region that had in the recent past been unfortunately bedevilled by various civil wars and ethnic strife. He said: "Ghana will continue to engage actively other actors on the international scene for the necessary collaboration to find lasting solution to the current situation in Cote d'Ivoire and Somalia, the ongoing tragedy in Darfur in the Sudan and the Israeli Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. Mr Mustapha Darboe, Regional Director of WFP, who represented the Executive Director of the WFP, Mr James Morris at the signing ceremony, noted that the number and frequency of cataclysmic natural disasters had increased significantly over the past decade. He said in 2005, the WFP, which is the food aid arm of the UN system, distributed four million tonnes of food to 96.7 million people in 82 countries. West Africa, Mr Darboe said ‘is faced with triple threats of poverty, food insecurity and civil conflicts’ and noted: "While Liberia and Sierra Leone were recovering from decades of conflicts, the situation in Cote d'Ivoire is still of concern." He said the WFP had supported Ghana for three years since the early 1990s and as such she was selected for the West Africa UNHRD for its strategic location, access to air, land and sea routes, stability and commitment to regional stability through the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Centre.GNA