World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Despite good rains across much of the Sahel this year, 1.4 million children are expected to be malnourished - up from one million in 2012, according to the 2013 Sahel regional strategy. (..) But humanitarians worry of donor fatigue and many are concerned possible military intervention in Mali will distract donors from the chronic food insecurity and malnutrition crises in the region. (..) Alain Cordeil, head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mauritania, voiced his fears. “If we only have political interest from donors for refugees, we will not solve the problems for this region…This could be very chaotic,” he told IRIN.

Addressing a meeting at the FAO headquarters in Rome – attended by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on the Sahel, Romano Prodi, and other senior UN officials and mediators dealing directly with the Sahel crisis – FAO’s Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, noted that the relation between food insecurity, hunger and the dispute over natural resources and conflicts was particularly evident in the Sahel.

As this year's emergency winds down, the question on aid workers' minds is, "How can the Sahel break from its recurring cycle of food crises?" U.N. Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, David Gressly, said now is the time to end chronic food insecurity. Aid agencies say they are working to build the "resilience" of the most vulnerable communities, but more needs to be done. (..) Aid agencies also say that prevention is cheaper than treatment.

An active monsoon and above normal temperatures triggered heavy downpours and flash floods during this year’s rainy season across West Africa and the Sahel, killing hundreds of people, displacing hundreds of thousands more and devastating farms in some of the countries already hit by a severe drought and acute food shortages.

The growing regularity of droughts across the Sahel region has left millions in need of emergency food assistance, the UN humanitarian food agency announced today, while also warning that malnutrition was still rampant in Senegal, Chad, Niger and Mauritania. A spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP), Elisabeth Byrs, told reporters in Geneva that the UN agency already assisted six million people in the Sahel during the month of July – but cautioned that humanitarian needs still remained “huge” ahead of the October harvest.

Prolonged dry spells and erratic rains in 2011 have cut food production by 34 percent, which is a substantial loss. (..) Even when rainfall is normal, Mauritania produces less than 30 percent of the food it needs. The World Food Programme's Jane Howard said they had been unable to buy food for school meals for around 146,000 children for a project running until 2013 as the agency has been unable to raise any of the money.

Mauritanians are used to going hungry - the country is structurally food insecure and drought-prone - but this year 700,000 Mauritanians are facing hunger, which is triple the number in 2010, or one in four people in rural areas, according to the government Commissariat de la Sécurité Alimentaire and the World Food Programme (WFP) (December 2011). (..) Thus far only $17 million has been made available for Mauritania, according to OCHA’s financial tracking system, which is nowhere near enough to meet the country’s needs: WFP alone requires $50 million to fund its response and thus far has received just one-quarter of that, according to WFP head Jacqueline Seeley.

Mauritanians are used to going hungry - the country is structurally food insecure and drought-prone - but this year 700,000 Mauritanians are facing hunger, which is triple the number in 2010, or one in four people in rural areas, according to the government Commissariat de la Sécurité Alimentaire and the World Food Programme (WFP) (December 2011). (..) Thus far only $17 million has been made available for Mauritania, according to OCHA’s financial tracking system, which is nowhere near enough to meet the country’s needs: WFP alone requires $50 million to fund its response and thus far has received just one-quarter of that, according to WFP head Jacqueline Seeley.

The international community must urgently aid tens of thousands of people who have fled fighting in northern Mali and prevent their displacement from burdening host communities already hit by food insecurity, an official of the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has said. (..) More than 55,000 people have fled Mali into neighbouring Niger, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso while another 60,000 are internally displaced within Mali since fighting erupted, the official said.

The United Nations is warning of a new food crisis in Africa, with droughts and poor harvests leaving more than 10 million people in need of assistance. Niger, Burkino Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Cameroon and Nigeria have all declared states of emergency in relation to the drought.