Head of UN food aid agency urges support for Mali and entire Sahel region

The international community must continue its efforts to help feed people in the Sahel, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today, following a visit to the West African region marred by high levels of food and nutrition insecurity, as well as the effects of the conflict in Mali. “The Sahel is facing a double threat: instability, caused by a conflict that has sent refugees across its borders, and chronic hunger, caused by cycles of drought and poor harvests. Last year the international community helped avert a crisis in the Sahel, but our work is not over,” WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin said in a news release. She spent five days in Burkina Faso and Mali, which along with Cameroon, Chad, the Gambia, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, comprise the Sahel. Last year the international community provided $1.2 billion in assistance to feed around 10 million people in the region. (..) Meanwhile, in New York, the Security Council was briefed today in a closed-door session on Mali and the wider Sahel region by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos.

Grim food security outlook for Zimbabwe

According to Felix Bamezon, UN World Food Programme (WFP) country director, Zimbabwe’s current food insecurity levels are the worst in four years. “During the peak hunger period of January to March 2013, approximately 19 percent of Zimbabwe’s rural population - the equivalent of one in five people - are estimated to be in need of food assistance,” he told IRIN. (..) Of the country’s 13 million people, WFP and the government are providing food aid to 1.58 million in 37 districts across the country.

Mali and Mauritania: War, Drought and School Meals

No food, no school. That is the reality in Mali as described by a UN World Food Programme officer. Families are just looking for ways to survive. If you can provide food at school the children will come, and this holds the key to the country's future. The World Food Programme (WFP) is launching emergency school feeding in the northern part of Mali. This will feed close to 70,000 children throughout the conflict-affected area. WFP is already feeding 113,000 children in the southern part of the country. Will there be funding? That is a big question, because WFP relies on voluntary funding from governments and the public. Right now this operation is only 20 percent funded. (..) The neighboring country of Mauritania is also feeling the impact of the war, having taken in over 70,000 Malian refugees. (..) Sophie Ndong, of WFP in Mauritania, says that last year "primary school children were assisted during 80 days only instead of the 160 days planned."

Cooperation key to drought prevention, UN officials stress at high-level meeting

Countries need to work together to use their experiences, science and technologies to create formal national preventive policies against droughts, United Nations officials said today at the opening of a high-level international meeting designed to make the world less susceptible to the impacts of water scarcity. “Prevention must be our priority,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his video message to the opening of the High-Level Meeting on National Drought Policy in Geneva. (..) Organized jointly by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and partners, the five-day meeting brings together policymakers, development agencies and leading scientists and researchers.