World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Despite good rains across much of the Sahel this year, 1.4 million children are expected to be malnourished - up from one million in 2012, according to the 2013 Sahel regional strategy. (..) But humanitarians worry of donor fatigue and many are concerned possible military intervention in Mali will distract donors from the chronic food insecurity and malnutrition crises in the region. (..) Alain Cordeil, head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mauritania, voiced his fears. “If we only have political interest from donors for refugees, we will not solve the problems for this region…This could be very chaotic,” he told IRIN.

Addressing a meeting at the FAO headquarters in Rome – attended by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on the Sahel, Romano Prodi, and other senior UN officials and mediators dealing directly with the Sahel crisis – FAO’s Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, noted that the relation between food insecurity, hunger and the dispute over natural resources and conflicts was particularly evident in the Sahel.

As this year's emergency winds down, the question on aid workers' minds is, "How can the Sahel break from its recurring cycle of food crises?" U.N. Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, David Gressly, said now is the time to end chronic food insecurity. Aid agencies say they are working to build the "resilience" of the most vulnerable communities, but more needs to be done. (..) Aid agencies also say that prevention is cheaper than treatment.

An active monsoon and above normal temperatures triggered heavy downpours and flash floods during this year’s rainy season across West Africa and the Sahel, killing hundreds of people, displacing hundreds of thousands more and devastating farms in some of the countries already hit by a severe drought and acute food shortages.

The growing regularity of droughts across the Sahel region has left millions in need of emergency food assistance, the UN humanitarian food agency announced today, while also warning that malnutrition was still rampant in Senegal, Chad, Niger and Mauritania. A spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP), Elisabeth Byrs, told reporters in Geneva that the UN agency already assisted six million people in the Sahel during the month of July – but cautioned that humanitarian needs still remained “huge” ahead of the October harvest.

Tens of thousands of people have been affected by flooding in parts of central, eastern and southern Chad following heavy rains in August. Thousands of hectares of crops and hundreds of houses have also been destroyed. (..) The flooding has come when Chad is still grappling with food insecurity.

Tens of thousands of people have been affected by flooding in parts of central, eastern and southern Chad following heavy rains in August. Thousands of hectares of crops and hundreds of houses have also been destroyed. (..) The flooding is occurring at a time when Chad is still grappling with food insecurity.

As famine spreads across Africa's Sahel region, aid agencies are warning they are now facing a multi-million-dollar shortfall in dealing with the crisis. (..) A lethal mix of sporadic rains, soaring food prices, regional conflict and chronic deepening poverty has left more than 13 million people short of food in the drought-ridden region. (..) The World Food Program has plans in place to assist more than 9 million people in the eastern part of Chad this year - that is quadruple the amount being fed right now.

Mothers with hungry and malnourished children are traveling by any means they can to get to feeding sites and clinics in the Chadian desert, such as Dibinindji, where no roads exist and where it is sometimes too late to save their babies’ lives. (..) The inhabitants in this vast expanse of the Chadian desert eke an existence from subsistence farming in this unforgiving environment, and this year it has been especially unkind. (..) Health and U.N. officials warn that more children will die if the international humanitarian assistance is not increased.

Food can take up to four months to reach those who need it most in landlocked Chad, making airlifts the best and speediest way to reach vulnerable children, WFP’s Chad country director Alice Martin-Daihirou said in a statement. (..) Almost 200 tons of fortified peanut paste have been flown into Chad to help prevent malnutrition in tens of thousands of children in the drought-stricken country, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says. (..) WFP aims to help 1.6 million people in the worst-affected regions of Kanem, Bahr-El-Ghazel, Batha, Sila, Ouaddai, Wadi Fira, Hadjer Lamis, Lac and Guera in the Sahelian belt of the country.