From Space Maps to Saving Lives: WFP Aid Worker’s Journey

Before Pedro Matos joined the World Food Programme (WFP) for 17 years, he said his job in space engineering “wasn’t enough.”

Before donning a beige WFP vest and boots to face hurricanes, wars, and refugee camps, the Portuguese scientist worked with satellite imagery and cartography, creating maps to support humanitarian missions—until he realised he didn’t want to stay behind a computer screen.

On World Humanitarian Day, marked annually on 19 August, Mr. Matos shared his story with UN News.

“At a certain point, it just wasn’t enough,” he recalled of his space engineering job. “I didn’t want to be making maps for others to respond to crises. I wanted to take those maps and be the one to respond.”

That’s exactly what he did. At WFP, he first developed maps on the ground and then went on to coordinate the agency’s emergency operations.

Since then, he has visited dozens of countries, often at the epicentre of crises—from Hurricane Idai in Mozambique to the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

Coordinating an emergency response is like “moving an entire government,” where each UN agency represents a “ministry,” and the response only works when everyone comes together across the four essential areas in a crisis response: food, shelter, water, and health.

Having just returned from a mission in Bangladesh, he described efforts to respond at Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp and home to 700,000 people who fled violence in Myanmar.

“We’ve been able to provide better conditions for people to live in this limbo with a little more comfort,” he said, recalling his visit there in 2018 at the height of the crisis.

At that time, “a million people crossed the border in a month.” Today, although they remain in “limbo,” he pointed to improvements such as more monsoon-resistant homes and roads, gas stoves, and reforestation.

The job comes with both challenges and rewards.

“We’ve had instances where we’ve been kidnapped or come under fire, but it’s not the things that happen to us that impact us the most,” he said. “It’s the things that happen to others that have the most impact.”

Hurricane Idai in Mozambique was a Category 5 hurricane that hit Beira in 2019. It was one of the biggest and most intense crises but also one of the most rewarding, he said.

“There’s a mix of intensity and difficulty because we couldn’t reach everyone, but at the same time, tens or hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we hadn’t been there,” he said. “That was the most impactful response in my 17 years at the UN.”

In Yemen, “we were bombed 20 times a day” in the capital, Sana’a, he said, adding that “there’s a strange normalcy” that develops.

“We find ourselves saying things like, ‘No, that wasn’t very far; it was only 500 metres from here,’” he said. “It’s something I never thought I’d say before doing this work.”

In central Ukraine several weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, he called the situation “very intense.” Within a week, he and his colleagues began distributing money to people coming from the frontlines.

“We couldn’t reach everyone, but there were tens or hundreds of thousands of people who would have died if we hadn’t been there.”

When interviewing recipients about how they used the money, he said it was “very gratifying… beautiful.” Some bought painkillers, others paid for gas to escape the frontlines, and one mother bought her daughter ice cream for the first time since the war began.

“We all think we know what the humanitarian sector is,” Mr. Matos explained. “I thought we’d be feeding 100 people, never imagining feeding 13 million a day in Yemen. The scale is incredible.”

Humanitarian work spans many professions, from social work to procurement, human resources, and law—mirroring the private and government sectors.

WFP received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, a recognition Mr. Matos accepted with humility.

“Our work is largely invisible, despite feeding 120 million people every day,” he said. “It gave us a platform to raise awareness about crises like Congo, Myanmar, Sudan, and Gaza, which often go unnoticed.”

He said his job is to give voice to the voiceless when crises fade from headlines. Despite risks, Mr. Matos has no doubt about the most important lesson he learned:

“People are essentially good. When faced with tragedy, people want to help others, even if they are very different. It was good to realise this because it’s not always obvious from afar.”