World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The UK has pledged £38m ($61m) in food aid to drought-hit Ethiopia - enough to feed 1.3m people for three months. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said the World Food Programme cash would also treat 329,000 malnourished children and mothers.

The UK has pledged £38m ($61m) in food aid to drought-hit Ethiopia - enough to feed 1.3m people for three months. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said "direct intervention", managed by the World Food Programme, was needed top stop a catastrophe.

In the Horn of Africa, unseen as yet by the world's television cameras, a pitiful trek of the hungry is taking place. (..) The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) says: "In June, the famine early-warning systems network said it had compared rainfall data for Kenya and Ethiopia and concluded that 2010-11 was the driest or second driest year since 1950-51 in 11 of 15 analysed pastoral zones. This does not, however, mean that this is yet the worst drought in the Horn of Africa. The 2007-09 drought, for instance, peaked in September 2009 with 22 million people in need of humanitarian assistance."

A United Nations official says Somalia is facing a food crisis because of a drought and rising food prices. (..) The head of the U.N. World Food Program says the agency been scaling back programs in Somalia and Ethiopia because of dwindling resources.

Two employees of the World Food Programme have been released in Ethiopia after being kidnapped in an attack in the country's Somali region in which their driver was killed, the UN agency said Thursday.

A drought plaguing parts of the Horn of African means around 9 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, the World Food Program said from Rome. (..) "A slowly evolving regional hunger crisis may not have the immediate impact of a mega-emergency like the Haitian earthquake, or Pakistan floods, but the drought and rising malnutrition in the Horn affects more people and its effects are equally devastating," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a statement.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) on Thursday announced that two of its staff members safely returned after being missing following a deadly incident in Ethiopia. On May 13, the two staff members went missing after an incident in Ethiopia's Somali Region. The convoy in which they were travelling was attacked by assailants while on a monitoring mission.

ELEANOR HALL: The United Nations is warning that more than 10 million people could be affected by the horn of Africa's worst drought in decades. (..) TIMOTHY MCDONALD: (..) Emergency appeals throughout the region are about half funded and the World Food Programme is currently able to meet only a third of the actual food needs in its areas of operation.

An estimated 9 million people across the Horn of Africa are facing a severe food crisis following a prolonged drought in the region, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on Wednesday. According to WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran, drought conditions in Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and parts of Uganda has left children and women in need of humanitarian assistance.

(..) The United Nations’ food agency has been forced to scale back aid in two of the affected countries, Somalia and Ethiopia, due to a lack of funds, at a time when rations should be increased, Josette Sheeran, WFP’s executive director, said in an e-mailed statement today.