The Royal Relationship Between Health and Humanitarian Aid
USAID’s Matt Nims chats with Princess Sarah Zeid of Jordan on improving humanitarian assistance
Princess Sarah Zeid, an advocate for maternal and child health and nutrition in emergency assistance, has recently been to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, South Sudan and Uganda with the World Food Program (WFP). As an important USAID partner in delivering food assistance around the globe, WFP’s operational and logistical capabilities are unparalleled and their ability to move quickly and at scale is critical, particularly in times of acute food insecurity.
Food for Peace (FFP) Acting Director Matt Nims caught up with Princess Sarah, who was born in Texas and raised in England, to ask what she saw out in the field. Bearing witness to hopelessness and fatigue from different communities in each of the four countries, the princess says there needs to be a more “individual-centered” approach to humanitarian aid.
Matt: Can you share with us what stood out most for you during your trip?
Princess Sarah: Everywhere I traveled, I saw enormous need and suffering, but also courage and determination. I saw women and girls who will do everything in their power to protect, feed and educate the children in their care, but who are often powerless and malnourished themselves. Grandmothers who have had to step in to raise orphaned children because their parents have been killed in the conflict or by disease. Mothers with their listless babies at health centers or food distribution sites who themselves survive on only one lean meal a day. We don’t focus on caregivers as much as we should, include them in behavior change activities, understand their needs or respect what they are enduring on behalf of the children in their care.
Matt: I’m curious if being a member of a royal family changed your perspective on humanitarian assistance overall. Or did that not matter?
Princess Sarah: Having the privilege of an education, access to quality services, living in an area with no conflict, not being food insecure, it comes with responsibility. It has been a huge privilege to travel to the countries I have, and we have an obligation to make visible the invisible and the opportunity to bring about change.
I have learned so much from my recent travels with WFP, seen places, people and activities many other people have not: the extraordinary complexity of and pin-point accuracy required in an aerial food drop in South Sudan, and the hard work done on the ground with the community before and after to ensure food is provided to the most vulnerable; impassable and insecure roads convoys of supply trucks negotiate to reach their destination; what it’s like to hold a listless malnourished child on your lap only to feel them bounce and wriggle back to life, see the spark and curiosity return to their eyes, because you are able to feed them the nutrients they desperately need; that the malnourished crowd of women and children at a feeding center are the tip of the iceberg, and at every stage we have to ask ‘who are we missing and how can we gain access?’ — and not just today but for weeks and months to come; how shocking it is to discover the small child you’re talking to is actually 12 years old, but the stunting they have suffered has permanently impaired their physical and cognitive growth — their future.
There are very serious changes that need to be made to the overall architecture of how we approach crises, how we communicate why we do what we do.
If we can’t even sort ourselves out sector by sector, solving these problems becomes all the more difficult. The beauty is, we know what these issues are and we know how to prevent mortality. In order to get on and do it, we need a change from politics all the way down to the community level and the empowerment of the community.
Matt: How familiar are you with USAID’s Food for Peace work? From what you observed during your trip, do you have any suggestions for how we provide humanitarian assistance?
Princess Sarah: I know that USAID is the major donor for WFP’s refugee operations. With FFP, WFP has been able to provide food assistance in eastern DRC for example, especially in Tanganyika, North and South Kivu provinces, where a complex environment of conflict, political instability is driving widespread food and nutrition insecurity and poor infrastructure persists.
In these areas, WFP interventions, made possible with FFP funds, have saved and changed lives.
About the Authors
Princess Sarah Zeid of Jordan, an advocate for maternal and child health and nutrition in emergency assistance, has recently been to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, South Sudan and Uganda with the World Food Program. Matthew Nims is the Acting Director of USAID’s Office of Food for Peace and has more than 18 years of international development and emergency programming experience. Follow that office at @USAIDFFP.
