World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Read UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon message to mark World Food Day, which this year promotes the Right to Food.

WFP makes an urgent appeal today for US$81 million in new donations to mount another major food assistance and logistics project aimed at feeding more than 230,000 refugees and 150,000 internally displaced people in eastern Chad.

WFP welcomes US government contributions in May totaling $32.4 million to feed people confronting critical humanitarian situations ranging from severe drought to conflict in Kenya, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Colombia.

WFP thanks the Government of Libya for facilitating the transport of 14,000 metric tons of cereals through its territory to Chad, where more than 200,000 Sudanese fleeing the conflict in neighbouring Darfur have taken refuge in camps in the north of the country and are desperately in need of assistance.

The United Nations World Food Programme has made dramatic progress in reducing malnutrition in Ethiopia, Sudan and Chad but the achievements risk being diminished by constantly shifting security conditions, said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran today.

WFP has today that thousands of Chadians are running out of food in the eastern border region with Sudan and face a desperate struggle to survive unless new donations meet the needs of a rising tide of people driven from their homes.

WFP has condemned a kidnapping and armed attack on a WFP-contracted convoy in Eastern Chad early on Sunday (28 January).

The UN refugee agency and WFP have appealed for the rapid restoration of order in volatile eastern Chad following weekend unrest in which mobs looted warehouses storing vital aid supplies for hundreds of thousands of Darfurian refugees and Chadians.

WFP has warned that humanitarian operations in eastern Chad are becoming increasingly difficult, with periodic fighting forcing the agency to temporarily suspend all non-emergency activities in parts of the troubled region.

WFP warns that any continuation or escalation in the current conflict in Chad could have serious implications for the humanitarian effort and leave thousands of people short of food in both eastern Chad and across the border in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur.