World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

India will provide humanitarian assistance of USD 8 million to the African countries afflicted by severe famine and drought like Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti. (..) The assistance, which will be provided through the World Food Programme, is in continuation of New Delhi's commitment to the progress and development of Africa.

(..) Although India has benefited from rapid and substantial economic growth over the past decade, the country remains blighted by poverty and stark income inequalities. According to a 2011 World Food Programme report on India, approximately 25% of the world's hungry poor live in the country and around 43% of children under five years old suffer from malnutrition.

India has failed utterly in fields of sanitation, employment, maternal mortality, child nutrition, gender equality and carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Report 2011. (..) Gavin Wall, Chairman, UN Development Assistance Framework Taskforce; Mihiko Tamamura, Representative, World Food Programme (..).

Six ponds with abundant fish, six wells, three canals, enough vegetables and paddy to feed all. Bera, a remote village in Naxalite-hit Bundu block, about 50km from Ranchi district, got enough food for thought to come out of the rebel shadow and taste self-sufficiency, thanks to the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations.

According to the World Food Programme, 20 million more people joined the ranks of India's hungry in the past decade, and half of all the country's children are underweight. Some analyses say that fast-developing India is performing worse than some of the poorest countries, such as Liberia and Haiti, in addressing the basic issue of hunger. With so many farmers giving up, the question is how India will feed the entire country, not just its poor.

Winners of an inter-school painting competition, which aimed at promoting awareness of hunger and malnutrition issues among the youth, were awarded by the UN in the capital Saturday. Hosted by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), hundreds of students from 18 schools in the National Capital Region -- comprising Delhi and its suburban towns in adjoining Uttar Pradesh and Haryana -- participated in the event.

There are times when chili mixed with a little water is not enough to quell the hunger. (..) Malnutrition in India is on the rise, despite nutrition rehabilitation centres and ration shops. "Indicators of urban food insecurity ... reveal an alarming picture," says the Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Urban India, published by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and the World Food Programme.

The United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) has initiated a public-private partnership (PPP)-based food security programme and has launched it in Madhya Pradesh to compete malnutrition and improve capacity of local community. The state is placed among highly malnutrition rates and high child mortality rate in the world. The fund, the first such initiative by the UN arm, will come from Cargill India and the Japanese government.

The urban food security situation has deteriorated in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnakata and Madhya Pradesh, while Punjab showed a marginal worsening till 2006, says a Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Urban India released here on Friday by Union Urban Development Minister Jaipal Reddy. (..) “Taking into account the fact that urban inequality has worsened since 1991, the implications for the food security status of the urban poor or slum dwellers are worrying to say the least,'' said the report prepared jointly by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and the World Food Programme.

In a bid to bring transparency in the public distribution system (PDS), biometric ration cards were launched in Orissa Wednesday, an official said. (..) Designed jointly by the state government and the World Food Programme (WFP), the hi-tech biometric registration system aims to ensure that subsidised food goes only to those entitled to it. 'We are very proud of our partnership with the Orissa government in our effort to enhance the efficiency of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS),' WFP India Representative Mihoko Tamamura said.