World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of protests that ignited the revolt against Libya’s Moammar Ghaddafi.  As Libya celebrates, WFP remembers some of its challenges and achievements over the past year. Since operations began in March 2011, WFP reached nearly 1.5 million conflict affected people in Libya, and over another half a million returnees and Libyan refugees in Tunisia and Egypt.

A two-income, urban, coastal family find themselves living in a secondary school classroom near the vast Sahara desert. Hannah and her family of eight now live in a school in the southern Libyan town of Shatti, 60 kilometers north of the regional capital Sabha.

In Libya, the UN food agency is not only providing food assistance but plays a vital role in insuring that relief supplies and aid workers get where they need to be.

Since February this year, Libyans and other nationals spilt into southern Tunisia fleeing the conflict in Libya. While many have gone back home during the past weeks, Malud and his family are among 17,000 Libyans who still live in southern Tunisia as many still do not feel safe going back yet. 

WFP has begun ferrying aid workers to the besieged Libyan city of Misrata. The first ship set sail from Benghazi in early July bearing a cargo of humanitarian personnel as well as several hundred tons of food. This marks an important step forward for the aid effort in Misrata, which has been cut off from the rest of the country by road.

WFP has delivered food assistance to more than 500,000 people in Libya since the conflict broke out earlier this year. However, concerns are growing about people’s access to food, particularly in the areas most affected by the fighting. In some of these areas food prices have more than doubled.

A ship carrying vital food assistance arrived Wednesday in the embattled Libyan city of Misrata. The ship, the fourth since the start of the crisis, delivered enough food to feed 25,000 people trapped by the fighting. WFP is extending its operation in Libya until the end of August, with the aim of reaching 1.5 million people.

WFP has started moving food assistance through a new humanitarian corridor into western Libya to get help to areas beyond reach until now because of the fighting. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country food continues to arrive through land and sea channels.

A family escaping the conflict in Libya has described to WFP the growing problems that civilians inside the North African country face when trying to find food. “They just need the basic stuff – flour, water – because they don’t have anything,” said Mohammed, a student interviewed as he escaped by sea to Egypt.