World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP has chosen the theme of “Partnering with Men to Achieve Gender Equality” for this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD), to stress the importance of the two sexes working together to improve women’s lives around the world.

The heads of three of the United Nations largest humanitarian agencies are embarking on their first joint mission to visit their common operations.

As the media and the humanitarian community focus on the spreading drought in the Horn of Africa, WFP is deeply concerned that more attention is needed to highlight the persistent problems faced by the world’s refugees – most of them in Africa.

WFP food aid is being flown from the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) for thousands of people fleeing fighting in Katanga Province of the eastern DRC.

The heads of three of the largest UN humanitarian agencies urge the international community to match political progress in the Great Lakes region with a new commitment to end the suffering of the millions of people forgotten by the rest of the world.

As the world focuses on a series of massive natural disasters and the spread of avian influenza, hunger in Africa has quietly climbed to an all-time high, threatening to destabilize much of the continent, warns James T. Morris, Executive Director of WFP.

Brussels - WFP welcomes a cash donation of five million euros from Belgium which will allow the agency to provide urgently needed food to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Niger, Mali, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Kinshasa - To help bring peace to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, WFP announces that it will extend a vital operation to provide food rations to demobilized combatants and their families, as well as meeting the continuing needs of newly displaced people in the east.

Yokohama WFP welcomes an aid package of some JPY 1.954 billion (US$ 19 million) from the Japanese Government to assist refugees, internally displaced persons and victims of natural disasters and poverty in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).