World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

(..) As famine conditions have strengthened, funding for UN World Food Programme (WFP) has diminished. The UN food agency relies entirely on voluntary donations.

“I would like to request the government and WFP [the World Food Programme] to help us as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will die and the government will be responsible.” (..) Northern Afghanistan has been experiencing drought-like conditions in recent months which have hit crops, livestock and the livelihoods of farmers and their families.

Afghanistan is on the verge of a huge humanitarian disaster. Drought has ruined food supplies, and three million Afghans will face starvation if aid agencies do not have the resources in time to respond. (..) The lead agency in fighting hunger in Afghanistan, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), is low on funding. WFP, which relies on voluntary donations from governments and the public, is about $200 million short for this year's Afghanistan mission.

Aid agencies are racing to save people from starvation in Somalia. UNICEF says that a child dies every 6 minutes in the famine-ravaged country. Severe drought in East Africa, coupled with the conflict in Somalia, has produced one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in decades.

Food items were distributed to about 3,000 poor families in Ghogyani, Qarah “Bagh and Ab Band districts of southern Ghazni province, officials said on Tuesday. (..) The supplies were made by the World Food Programme (WFP), he added.

President Obama and Congress need to work together in an area where bipartisan cooperation has been present before: fighting hunger. (..) Silke Buhr of the UN World Food Programme says, "WFP is concerned that drought conditions in the country have had a significant impact on crop production and will lead to more people needing food assistance. These new needs come at a time when we are already facing major resource shortfalls and have already had to make some really tough decisions to priorities how we use our resources."

Two to three million people across Afghanistan are likely to need extra food aid from September following drought and a poor wheat harvest this year, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday. But Bradley Guerrant, the World Food Programme's deputy director for the country, told a news conference WFP's Afghan operations were facing a shortfall of almost 50 percent in donor funding for 2011 and it had already had to scale back.

The first half of this year was the deadliest six months for civilians in Afghanistan since the decade-old war began, the country's U.N. mission said on Thursday. (..) The U.N. World Food Program also said on Wednesday that two to three million people across Afghanistan are likely to need extra food aid from September following drought and a poor wheat harvest this year.

The United Nations says a drought in Afghanistan means up to 10 million people will need food aid this fall. The World Food Program says an additional 2-3 million people will need assistance on top of some 7.3 million Afghans already considered "food insecure".

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is being forced by a funding shortfall to cut its recovery programmes in nearly half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, a spokesperson said. “We are having to refocus our activities to continue supporting those who are most in need, especially in provinces that have the largest number of people who are either very highly food insecure or very food insecure,” WFP spokesperson Challiss McDonough told IRIN.