Conducted at a time of rising humanitarian needs, declining resources and systemic reforms reshaping collective action, this synthesis draws on 65 WFP evaluations carried out between 2018 and 2025 and assesses WFP’s role, strengths and challenges in humanitarian coordination with a view to informing its positioning in this evolving landscape.
The evaluations affirm WFP’s foundational role in enabling collective response under emergency conditions. As cluster lead or co-lead, its agility, responsiveness and operational weight enable large-scale coordination, especially where few other organizations can. These strengths are most visible when roles are formally designated.
The synthesis concludes with two recommendations: at the corporate level, WFP should clarify and prioritize its role in coordination mechanisms beyond the clusters that it leads; and it should create a narrative for its workforce that positions coordination as a core requirement, while preserving space for independent action when the humanitarian imperative demands it.
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