World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Compared to this time last year, things have improved for Somalis who have directly benefited from the creation of community assets which provide a way out of the proverty trap.

WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin has sent condolences to the Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,  Jose Graziano da Silva, in the wake of the killing of an FAO employee in southern Somalia earlier this week.
The note, sent Tuesday, expressed the deep sadness of WFP staff over the death of a fellow humanitarian, who was working to make build a better life for ordinary people in Somalia.

Providing emergency school snacks to children attending lessons has proved to be invaluable in making sure they get vital nutrients, as well as helping them to concentrate on the task in hand.

In Puntland, hundreds of people have benefitted from WFP’s Food for Training programme that offers food in exchange for participation in skills training. The programme helps people improve their economic status and self-reliance.

WFP Public Information Officer Susannah Nicol has visited Somalia several times over the last year and spoken to families who fled the famine and conflict in the south.  She looks back on the year since the famine declaration, charting the progress of relief efforts and the experiences of two mothers who have received WFP assistance.

Twelve months after the declaration of famine in Somalia, WFP provides ten simple questions with relative answers in order to better explain what the situation is now like.

In Somaliland, thousands more people are getting fresh meat as part of their diet as the direct result of WFP using vouchers. The vouchers are being provided as the family ration to households who have a malnourished child enrolled in the Targeted Supplementary Feeding Programme. Local traders are seeing the benefits we well as the money is ploughed back into their economy. Added to that, the number of children being brought for screening has risen, so it's a win-win situation all round...

Families in the Somilaland region of northern Somalia are enjoying a more balanced diet thanks to food vouchers which they can use to shop for goods like camel and goat meat at the local market. By allowing them to buy directly from local traders, the project is also a boost for the region's economy.

The World Food Programme is committed to ensuring that vital food assistance reaches the hungry in Somalia.  We know that the vast majority of our food assistance reaches the hundreds of thousands  of hungry people who depend on it every day in Mogadishu.  Across Somalia, more than one million people rely on WFP food assistance each month.

WFP is reaching up to 1.3 million people with food relief in those parts of Somalia to which we have access. These include Puntland, Somaliland, central regions, Mogadishu and some border areas of the south. To assist the most vulnerable, WFP has increased its nutrition programmes using specialized products both to prevent and treat malnutrition in young children, pregnant women and nursing mothers. Nutrition programmes now make up some 63 percent of WFP's activities in Somalia.