World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The United Nations says it is ramping up its aid efforts for the drought-hit regions of East Africa. (..) WFP spokeswoman Emilia Casella told reporters in Geneva that the U.N. food agency also aims to provide aid to 40,000 people in the Afgoye region and will start airlifts to the capital Mogadishu in the coming days.

It is a story that has become a staple of the international news agenda: rains fail in Africa, crops die in the fields, populations start moving, and famine is declared. Famines are rare, but despite all the efforts of the humanitarian community, they do still occur, and this time it is southern Somalia where a combination of severe drought, high food prices and insecurity is putting the lives of millions at risk.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) said on Thursday it will start airlifting vital supplies of special nutritious foods for the malnourished children who desperately need it in Mogadishu "within days." In a statement issued in Nairobi after visiting the war-torn nation, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran announced that the Horn of Africa nation is facing a "life and death situation."

Australia will boost its food and emergency aid to the Horn of Africa by $30 million in response to an escalating humanitarian crisis. (..) Mr Rudd said he would travel to Nairobi at the invitation of the executive director of the World Food Programme and then visit border camps between Kenya and Somalia with the UN.

The UN World Food Program on Wednesday said 11.3 million people are in need of food assistance due to drought in the Horn of Africa, and declared a corporate emergency, (..). "WFP with the support of many has been scaling up and acting on the effects of this drought for more than 6 months," WFP Executive Director, Josette Sheeran said in a statement received in Nairobi.

The United Nations has declared a famine in two regions of southern Somalia, as it suffers the worst drought in more than half a century. When does mass starvation turn into a famine? (..) Most major aid agencies - the FAO, the WFP, the UN's Famine Early Warning Systems Network, Save the Children UK, CARE International, the European Commission Joint Research Centre and Oxfam - only describe a crisis as a famine when the situation on the ground reaches level five on the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) system.

Based on the UN's five-step scale the last official famine in Africa occured in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s but other huminatarian catastrophes have followed. (..) Lesotho 2002 : (..) The World Food Programme estimated that around 500,000 people needed food aid, many of them for up to a year but an humanitarian disaster was averted.

WITH the prospect of a region-wide famine in the Horn of Africa, aid at the world's biggest refugee camp is not yet reaching some of the most vulnerable asylum seekers. (..) Many organisations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program, are working in Dadaab, but the high rates of malnutrition and child deaths show that aid delivery is lagging behind need.

Aid organizations are calling on the Canadian government to step up its donations to drought-ravaged East Africa, as a cabinet minister prepares to go there. Canada must keep its promise to initiatives such as the World Food Program and the United Nations' refugee agency to help the millions of starving people in the region, said Kevin McCort, president and CEO of CARE Canada.

Orr said the World Food Program was not yet ready to trust Shabaab’s sudden reversal. The program supplies aid to some 6 million people in other parts of Somalia and East Africa. “We’re not operating in that part of the country because of death threats and extortionate demands,” he said. “We’re ready to go back, and exploring every channel. But we operate with huge volumes of food — there are up to 1 million in need of assistance in that area. Dumping it and driving away is not an option.”