Robert Kasca is the WFP Nepal Representative and Country Director. Robert has over 20 years of operational and leadership experience with WFP, the United Nations agency dedicated to fighting hunger and the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. His career with WFP started in Pakistan and shortly after in Dubai, UAE, as the Head of Operations for the Fast IT and Telecommunications Support Team (FITTEST). Since then, his work has taken him to places far and wide, including Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria, to mention a few. In WFP’s Headquarters in Rome, Robert worked as IT Emergency Coordinator, and in 2012 became the Chief of Global IT Support and Services Branch. From there he took the responsibilities of Deputy Country Director Support Services in Syria, and most recently, before arriving to Nepal, he served as the Deputy Country Director Support Services and Country Director a.i. for WFP in Afghanistan.
Outside WFP, Robert has worked with the Ministry of Defense of the Government of Slovenia and was part of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in Jerusalem in the early nineties, where he was deployed on several missions to Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq and Rwanda, among others.
Robert is a national from Slovenia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Marine Telecommunications and Engineering from the University of Zagreb, and a university degree in Business Information Science from the University of Maribor, Slovenia
What is the role and mandate of the WFP globally and in Nepal?
Globally, WFP follows the mandate of ‘saving’ and ‘changing lives.’ Because of the size and the media attention our operations receive in big emergencies, people often think of us as a humanitarian organization. However, since the 1960s, when WFP was just established, we have had a distinct dual mandate. The humanitarian response is a part of it, of course, and development is the other. When a catastrophic event -say a war or a natural disaster-impacts a large number of people, it is critical for us to act quickly to meet their immediate food and nutrition needs. But we also work to support communities and governments to address the underlying causes of hunger, that is, the development part, to ensure that people’s lives are altered in a way that helps them to sustain themselves in the future.
A major focus of our work in Nepal is on ‘changing lives’-WFP’s programme in the country prioritizes nutrition for mothers and children, as over 50 percent of children under five and 41 percent of young women of reproductive age are anaemic. Once children reach school, we continue that support by helping governments provide them with hot meals, which improves their learning and health. Building the resilience of communities to reduce the impact of climate change and disasters is another important part of our work. Given the frequency with which Nepal is impacted by disasters, most notably the 2015 earthquake, WFP helps build the capacity of the government to respond to crises. Emergency preparedness and response are therefore major components of our new five-year country strategic plan. In the meantime, we continue to be the first on the ground to provide humanitarian assistance whenever there is a disaster or an emergency situation. Take the recent earthquakes in western Nepal, for example. It hit Jajarkot and West Rukum districts late on a Friday night, and our staff were already out in the field on Saturday morning, distributing emergency ready-to-eat food and, a month later, multipurpose cash assistance to 15,000 people. This is how fast WFP operates!
Can you provide us with an overview of the food security and nutrition situation globally and in Nepal?
Worldwide, there are nearly a billion people who are currently food insecure. COVID-19 and the Ukraine war are the two main factors that played a significant role in this, resulting in increased fuel costs, scarcity of fertilizers, and rising food costs. Likewise, conflict and climate shocks are two other things that continue to exacerbate food insecurity globally.
In Nepal, as per the results of the food security analysis of the households undertaken by WFP in May-April last year, 4.26 million people are not consuming an adequate diet. This means around 15 percent of the total population is not eating enough nutritious food, and it is difficult for them to put food on the table every day for their family. While this latest figure is slightly lower compared to the same time a year ago and the year before when COVID19 was at its peak, it is still extremely high and shows the magnitude of the problem. Persistent inflation is one of the main drivers of rising food insecurity. WFP Nepal’s monthly market monitor of food products for December has shown that, compared to last year, prices of basic food commodities such as coarse rice and wheat flour have increased by more than 10 percent. Similarly, changing climate patterns in the form of floods, dry spells and storms are destroying crops and food supplies, reducing the availability of food and driving prices up.
