World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

(...) "The situation is dire. The UN is doing its best, but it is trying to find more funding to help them," said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, an NGO working with the Rohingya. With at least 32,000 people displaced by the latest violence – and at least 107,000 since trouble broke out in June – thousands have sought safety in refugee camps around the Burmese town of Sittwe. Those camps are at crisis point, according to Refugees International, which estimates that nearly a quarter of children were malnourished.

Torrential rain in Myanmar has forced thousands to flee their homes and flooded hundreds of thousands of acres of rice paddies. (..) The government, private benefactors and the World Food Program have provided food rations to flood victims.

Padamyar FM, a radio station covering the Sagaing region of Myanmar’s Dry Zone, has been broadcasting local market prices of crops, from sesame and maize to peas and groundnuts, twice a day since March. (..) Myanmar’s Dry Zone, home to about 14.5 million people, is also one of the hungriest parts of the country. According to the World Food Programme, 41 percent of households there are food insecure – meaning that they regularly cut down on what they eat because they don’t have enough food.

The World Food Program says it has distributed emergency food supplies to 66,000 people in the past week and is now moving additional stocks to the western Rakhine state. WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that the agency is planning a three-month operation in the area.

The annual harvest season in Myanmar's northern Kachin State has come and gone but much of the rice crop has not been harvested or was never planted after fighting between government forces and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) erupted on 9 June 2011 after a 17-year ceasefire was broken. (..) But getting into the most-affected areas will only be the first step, Marcus Prior, spokesman for World Food Programme (WFP) Asia, told IRIN on 5 January. (..) "Our operations across the country are facing significant shortfalls - right now WFP only has funds to guarantee food deliveries into February."

As the government of Myanmar continues to pledge political reform, donors are reassessing their giving in a country that has historically received among the lowest levels of per capita development aid of any developing country. (..) In Chin State, eight out of 10 households are food insecure, according to the World Food Programme, while hundreds of thousands were internally displaced as of June 2011 and in need of assistance, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

November 14 - Part of Myanmar's breadbasket in the country's centre is fast deteriorating and the area may face greater food insecurity without immediate action, local NGOs warn. (..) While greening efforts are important, boosting food security demands a "comprehensive development effort" to protect the poorest from the impacts of weather variability, said Marcus Prior, World Food Programme's Asia spokesman. "Vulnerability in this area is cyclical - always more severe during the lean [dry] season, when work is scarce, wages lower and basic food prices higher."

Part of Myanmar's breadbasket in the country's centre is fast deteriorating and the area may face greater food insecurity without immediate action, local NGOs warn. (..) While greening efforts are important, boosting food security demands a "comprehensive development effort" to protect the poorest from the impacts of weather variability, said Marcus Prior, World Food Programme's Asia spokesman. "Vulnerability in this area is cyclical - always more severe during the lean [dry] season, when work is scarce, wages lower and basic food prices higher."

A strong earthquake that toppled homes in northeastern Myanmar has killed more than 60 people, and there were fears Friday the toll would mount as conditions in more remote areas became known. (..) An official from the U.N.'s World Food Program said there were many casualties and serious damage in Mong Lin village, five miles (eight kilometers) from Tachileik. State radio said 29 were killed there and 16 injured.

A massive shortfall in funding means more than 100,000 people are still homeless three months after Cyclone Giri hit Myanmar and thousands are in debt with bleak prospects of recovering their income, aid officials say. (..) A recent assessment by two U.N. agencies, Food and Agricultural Organisation and World Food Programme, found a third of the survivors are relying on food aid. “If that is not there, food security may deteriorate,” said Tasfai Ghermazien from the FAO in Myanmar.