U.N. Says Pakistan Has Food 'Emergency', but Donors Look Elsewhere

Hunger in Pakistan is at emergency levels after years of conflict and floods, but funding has dwindled as new crises such as Syria grab donors' attention, the United Nations food aid chief said on Sunday. (..) Although most have now returned, about half of Pakistan's population still does not have secure access to enough food, up from a little over a third a decade ago, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said. Fifteen percent of children are severely malnourished, and some 40 percent suffer from stunted growth. "This is an emergency situation, both from the food security side as well as from the malnutrition side," WFP chief Ertharin Cousin told Reuters. "We need to raise the alarm." (..) Already, Cousin said, the rising cost of the refugee crisis in Syria meant it was harder to attract funds to Pakistan.

Palestinians in Syria find themselves displaced again

Among the half-million refugees who have poured across the border from Syria into Lebanon is a group of people who find themselves doubly displaced. To date, an estimated 55,000 Palestinians have sought sanctuary in Lebanon from the war in Syria, according to the United Nations, most of them descendants of families displaced by the creation of Israel in 1948. (..) Although the number of Palestinians fleeing to Lebanon is relatively small compared with the number of Syrians who have become refugees, their presence here is considered particularly sensitive as sectarian tensions aggravated by the Syrian war rise regionwide.

Syrian refugee in Jordan: Don't forget us

Like many other Syrians, Fatima has escaped the violence in her country, and now she, her husband and four children are among the close to half a million Syrians that have taken refuge in Jordan. (..) The humanitarian crisis has put Syria at the center of donor attention, with humanitarian aid pouring for the displaced inside and outside the country. WFP has to raise $26 million every week to meet the food needs of people affected by the conflict, said the World Food Program’s Laure Chadraoui.

Drought, poor harvest to worsen Haiti food crisis - WFP

An estimated 1.5 million Haitians face hunger because of poor harvests and rising food prices, as the Caribbean nation continues to reel from a series of natural disasters, says the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP). (..) “We are very concerned that 1.5 million people in Haiti face severe food insecurity, which means they need food assistance and don’t have all the food they need for a full and active life,” Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, WFP’s senior spokesperson for Latin America and the Caribbean, told Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Another 6.7 million people are struggling to meet their own food needs on a regular basis. Our main concern is children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers.”