Rebecca Vetharaniam Richards is a senior humanitarian leader with over 25 years of experience working on food security and hunger prevention in fragile and conflictaffected contexts. Her career spans humanitarian response, development policy and peacebuilding, with a sustained focus on tackling the structural drivers of food insecurity and supporting locally grounded solutions.
Most recently, Rebecca served as Chief and Head of the Global Network Against Food Crises at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). In this role, she led global efforts to shift responses to food insecurity from short-term assistance toward preventative, systemsbased approaches that address the political, economic and environmental drivers of food crises. She strengthened collaboration among UN agencies, civil society, research institutions and affected governments, helping mobilise over €13 million to support more coordinated and durable food security interventions.
Previously, Rebecca founded and led WFP’s Peace and Conflict Office, where she advanced conflictsensitive approaches to food security and famine prevention. Her work helped build the evidence linking food insecurity, instability and peace, and supported the design of programmes that recognise food access, livelihoods and local markets as central to resilience and social cohesion.
Rebecca has held senior field and regional leadership roles across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, including during the Syria crisis, and has spent more than half her career working directly in countries facing acute and chronic food insecurity. Across these roles, she has worked at the intersection of analysis and practice, translating research and policy into operational approaches that strengthen national systems and engage local communities.
She is a published author and speaker on food security, famine prevention and the humanitarian–development–peace nexus. Rebecca holds a Master’s degree in International Peace and Security from King’s College London and is currently undertaking doctoral research on food insecurity and conflict prevention.