Audit Reports

The audit focused on governance and risk management, beneficiary management, cash-based transfers, supply chain, monitoring, managing non-governmental organizations, and resource management. Guided by the Country Strategic Plan 2018–2025, WFP operations in Uganda include: food and nutrition; assistance for refugees; nutrition intervention to address the root causes and effects of food insecurity and malnutrition; and providing income support and training to people facing food insecurity to help them build resilience and capacities to adapt to climatic shocks. In 2022, WFP assisted 1.8 million beneficiaries, including 1.3 million refugees, by providing 84,740 metric tons of food and USD 45.2 million in cash transfers. Uganda hosts more than 1.5 million refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Burundi. The audit reviewed three activities under strategic outcomes 1 and 2, which accounted for 92 percent of the total direct operational costs and 95 percent of the beneficiary caseload during the audit period: (a) Provide food and nutrition assistance and promote financial inclusion of refugees (activity 1); (b) Provide food and nutrition assistance to crisis-affected households (activity 2); and (c) Provide nutritious hot meals to children attending school. Based on the results of the audit, the Office of Internal Audit reached an overall conclusion of some improvement needed.

As part of its annual workplan, the Office of Internal Audit conducted an audit of WFP’s staffing in emergencies. The audit focused on a review of WFP’s emergency staffing preparation, staffing scale-up and risks to staff wellness in emergencies. The team surveyed 28 country offices under an emergency designation and performed detailed reviews of emergencies in the following countries: Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Ukraine. WFP seeks to continuously strengthen its response to saving lives by effectively and efficiently supporting its emergency operations with the right skill sets and people. WFP is committed to providing its employees with an enabling and supportive workplace and ensuring that an effective health and welfare risk management process is in place. WFP faced unprecedented humanitarian needs worldwide in 2022, assisting 158 million people. In the period from January 2016 to December 2022, WFP responded to 128 emergencies, including in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Currently, more than half of WFP’s 23,000 global employees serve in emergency duty stations assisting beneficiaries. Based on the audit results, the Office of Internal Audit reached an overall conclusion of major improvement needed.

As part of its annual workplan, the Office of Internal Audit audited WFP cooperating partners’ digital and data processing risks. The audit focused on the adequacy, efficiency and effectiveness of WFP governance, risk management and internal controls to mitigate cooperating partners’ digital and data processing risks. WFP routinely relies on its cooperating partners’ processes and technology to process and safeguard beneficiaries’ personally identifiable information. WFP’s cooperating partners process a large amount of personally identifiable information, including current and prospective beneficiaries' personal data. Protecting this information is a fundamental duty of care to those WFP serves. Therefore, it is incumbent on WFP to ensure beneficiaries' privacy rights and personal data are safeguarded and processed by its cooperating partners in a manner that does not compromise its confidentiality, availability and integrity. Breaches in privacy could have profound consequences for individual beneficiaries or beneficiary communities and impact WFP's mission objectives. Based on the results of the audit, the Office of Internal Audit has come to an overall conclusion of major improvement needed.