World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Wajir - Abdi Seikh Musa was once a flourishing livestock herder, but now, as extreme drought grips the Horn of Africa, his animals are dying as the people of northern Kenya struggle for survival. (..) The UN food agency is distributing food in the region, but officials say they are struggling to meet the intensifying demands. "The needs are immense," said Benjamin Makokha, a local official with the World Food Programme. "Everyday the situation grows worse."

Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), is today (21 July) travelling to Somalia to view WFP's ongoing operations to feed vulnerable and hungry people affected by severe drought and conflict. Sheeran will return to Nairobi, Kenya this evening.

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 Dadaab camps are currently home to some 350,000 people. Deutsche Welle spoke with David Orr of the United Nations World Food Programme (..). David Orr: The situation is extremely serious. We continue to have large numbers of refugees streaming out of Somalia into the camp at Dadaab. Many of them have been walking mostly weeks. They arrive very tired, very hungry, very malnourished. There are high levels of malnutrition especially among the children.

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.