World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Jakarta – The Government of Indonesia today welcomed Project Laser Beam (PLB), a groundbreaking public-private partnership to end child malnutrition, as a critical initiative to help achieve their goal of ending child hunger and poverty. The announcement was made at the World Economic Forum East Asia, in Jakarta.

ROME– Tens of thousands of people yesterday took to the streets in cities around the world to show their support for the work of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in the fight against global hunger.

Expressing their “deepest concern”, the three Rome-based UN Agencies – FAO, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development – warned today that climate change is a major challenge to world food security and will increase hunger and malnutrition unless immediate action is taken.

WFP has kicked off a critical initiative to assist Indonesia in providing food for the nation\'s hungry poor and called on international donors to contribute urgently to a new three year US$98 million program for food aid for the country.

FAO has called for a renewed commitment to guarantee the right to food for the world's hundreds of millions of hungry people.

Read UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon message to mark World Food Day, which this year promotes the Right to Food.

Indonesia’s Co-ordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Aburizal Bakrie told WFP yesterday that the agency’s efforts in his country remain “essential to the lives of hundreds of thousands of hungry and malnourished children and women”.

At the request of the Indonesian authorities, WFP has started providing immediate food aid to people displaced by floods in the capital.

Within hours of the first reports of devastating floods this week in the Indonesian province of Aceh, WFP moved rapidly to deliver emergency supplies by air and road to some 127,000 displaced people in the hardest hit districts of Aceh Tamiang and Gayo Lues.

Working in close cooperation with Indonesian authorities, WFP has rapidly responded to the immediate needs of persons affected by the July 17 earthquake and tsunami in West Java.