World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The World Food Program has begun distributing some 72 tons of emergency food aid to help victims of last week's powerful earthquake, officials at the international agency said Saturday. (..) The WFP said the food aimed to help the Central American country's 13,000 quake victims, many of whose homes were damaged and live disrupted by the November 7 quake off the coast of western Guatemala.

[News article in Spanish] The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the World Food Programme signed an agreement to push joined efforts that will lead to higher agricultural productivity within Latin America and the Caribbean, in a way that would strengthen the access of its inhabitants towards healthy and better quality of foods.  The General Director of IICA, Victor M. Villalobos, affirmed: “More than a document, this agreement is a commitment with all the countries where the IICA and WFP work together. We will also explore the posibilieties in other parts of the hemisphere in order to share our experiences, especially the ones we reach to work with farmers in a small scale.”. The Executive Director of World Food Programme, Erthain Cousin, seeks to consolidate the work of both organizations for the programme Purchase for Progress(P4P), which has been running in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2009.

A new tropical storm was forming on Saturday in Central America, where 11 days of non-stop torrential rains had already affected 2 million people. (..) The UN World Food Program (WFP) expressed concern about both the immediate and long-term impact on food security in the region amid rising food prices on the international market.

Hunger Emergency had been denounced by Guatemala’s Human Rights Ombudsman Sergio Morales.(..)About 49 percent of children in Guatemala are chronically malnourished according to the World Food Program—the fourth highest rate in the world. In indigenous communities the rate is closer to 70 percent.

Bearing more than a kilo of mangos, oranges and apples on his shoulders, 13-year-old José slips through the queue and jumps on the bus. (..) José's family is among the 58% of Guatemalans who, according to the United Nations World Food Programme and the World Bank, live in extreme poverty, without even the means to afford to buy a basket of basic food.

While big emergencies with millions of victims dominate newspaper headlines, every year WFP responds to dozens of other "minor" emergencies that often go overlooked. The numbers may be smaller, but the misery is the same, which is why WFP Emergency Response expert Amy Horton says there's no such thing as a minor emergency.

Some 330,000 Guatemalans will need food aid over the coming months, just to be able to subsist, according to a new United Nations study. “It is a challenge for the country and the international community that we must confront,” UN World Food Programme (WFP) representative Willem van Milink said yesterday of the small Central American nation, which has recently been swept by torrential rains, floods, deadly landslides and a volcanic eruption.

Two months of torrential downpour in Guatemala have severely damaged the country's food supplies. Corn and maize crops have been destroyed, and more than 100,000 people now rely on emergency food rations of cooking oil, beans, and soy flour. Overflowing rivers have also contaminated wells, making drinking water scarce.

The number of Guatemalans going hungry is set to rise as the Central American nation faces more food shortages after devastating floods washed away crops, aid agencies say.(..)In recent years, the country has relied on international food aid to stave off hunger, including a U.N. WFP scheme that feeds 350,000 Guatemalans.(..)"The lean months are always especially risky," said WFP spokesman Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri. "The last harvest in Guatemala was not ideal and during the past months many families have already used up all their food stocks."

United Nations and partners seek $34 million to assist drought-stricken Guatemalans. In Guatemala, WFP supports 350,000 people in school and preschool feeding, and mother/child care. The United Nations, together with the Guatemalan Government and aid partners, launched on March 5th, a $34 million appeal to counter food shortages affecting 2.7 million people living in the Central American country's so-called ‘dry corridor,' which even before last year's drought had one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world.