World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The United Nations is to stop distributing food to nearly a million people in remote western Nepal because of funding shortfalls, threatening a major health crisis.

The UN's World Food Programme is about to scale down its operations in one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, Nepal. The WFP says it's because of a lack of funds from donor nations. More than half the population of Nepal lives on less than $1.18 a day. Half of all Nepali children under five years old are stunted or chronically undernourished.

The remote mountains of Nepal are suffering from a severe food crisis, but a lack of funding means aid agencies cannot continue to carry out relief operations.

The remote mountains of Nepal are suffering from a severe food crisis, but a lack of funding means aid agencies cannot continue to carry out relief operations. (..) For the past decade, international agencies like the UN World Food Programme (WFP) have been flying food into this region to prevent starvation. But the WFP has said that within the next two months it will drastically scale down aid to Nepal.

As a country vulnerable to the next "big one", people in Nepal are abuzz with an age-old, earthquake-resistant method of constructing buildings out of straw that could save lives, experts say. (..) The World Food Programme estimates 41 percent of the population are undernourished and says more than half a million people living in the far and mid-west regions are the most susceptible to agricultural problems.

Despite continuous price rise, a report suggests that major food grains’ prices can be expected to go down in coming months due to a good winter harvest. The harvest of winter crops wheat and barley is expected to be good in Nepal that will eventually improve the supply situation from mid-April onwards, controlling the rising food prices, according to a joint report published by UN World Food Program (WFP), Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives (MoAC), Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) and Consumer Interest Protection Forum (CIPF

Dhnakumari Dangi and her family will probably have to wait another six months before they can get enough to eat. Dangi lives in Jhuphal village in Dolpa, one of Nepal's poorest districts, at an altitude of 2,987 metres on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. The area is ranked one of the worst in the world for food security by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), due to its inaccessibility and the harsh terrain.

In recent decades, foreign aid has been taken for granted in Nepal.(..)The World Food Programme itself continues to advocate for food assistance while adjusting its programs to the exigencies of funding.

Nicole Menage took over as the World Food Programme's Country Representative in Nepal last autumn, and promptly found herself in the middle of a funding crunch. She spoke to Nepali Times about the impact this is likely to have millions who receive assistance from the organisation.

One of the more fraught debates has been the one surrounding food security, and in particular the role of the World Food Programme in addressing it. With funding drying up significantly for the latter's operations in Nepal in the next couple of years, and numbers targeted set to decline from a high of 2.4 million to 1.8 million, food security is primed to hit the headlines once more.
There will be those who will predict a catastrophe in the far west, and others who will say it is just as well. The World Food Programme itself continues to advocate for food assistance while adjusting its programs to the exigencies of funding.