The Poor Ponder at Saleh’s Mosque

"I scratch my head in surprise when I see Al-Saleh Mosque," said 42 year-old farmer Ali Najee Thabet. The opening of the giant new mosque named after Yemen's president 2 months ago has confused the poor throughout the country, mainly when they hear it cost a surprising $60 million, a massive amount in a country where poor people are struggling to survive. [...] The United Nation World Food Program (WFP) Representative and Country Director Mohamed El-Kohen revealed that WFP warns of new horror times across the globe for poor people in Yemen, mainly because of the price hikes, hinting that hunger and food shortage are the way to political instability, especially in a country which many of its population are wracked by poverty. Additionally, WFP reported that Yemen is the second poorest Arab state, just next to Somalia. Yemen's current population is estimated over 22 million and it has the highest birth mortality rate in the world with an average of nearly 7 children per woman.

UN official urges donors to release billions pledged for global food crisis

The United Nations urged donors Monday to release quickly billions of dollars in aid pledged at a food crisis summit last year after riots in developing countries over soaring prices. Jacques Diouf, director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and other delegates to an international meeting on food security warned that the global economic crisis must not cause countries to neglect the nearly billion people in the world that the U.N. says do not get enough to eat. The forum, organized by Spain and the United Nations, was designed to be a follow up to a 180-nation summit in Rome in June. [...] Josette Shearan, executive director of the World Food Program, said developing countries dependent on agriculture run the risk of getting left out as the world focuses on tumbling stock markets, flagging economic growth and failing banks. As people in developed countries fixate on Wall Street and Main Street, she told the conference, "we must not forget places with no streets." Shearan identified four effects the financial crisis is already having on the hunger crisis: remittances to poor countries like Haiti are down, nations that depend on exports of farm goods are suffering because of the economic slowdown in buyer countries, investment in agricultural infrastructure is declining and the credit crunch is particularly painful for small-scale farmers who need to borrow money for seeds and other supplies.

Warning of 'food crunch' with prices poised to rise

The world faces "the real risk of a food crunch" if governments do not take immediate action to address the agricultural impact of climate change and water scarcity, according to an authoritative report out today. Chatham House, the London-based think-tank, suggests the recent fall in food prices is only temporary and that they are set to resume an upward trend once the world emerges from the current downturn. "There is therefore a real risk of a 'food crunch' at some point in the future, which would fall particularly hard on import-dependent countries and on poor people everywhere," the report states. "Food prices are poised to rise again." [...] Josette Sheeran, head of the UN's World Food Programme, said she was expecting that this year would be at least as "challenging" as last year, when the number of undernourished rose by 40m to 963m people. "We are not seeing an alleviation of the hunger pressure," she told the Financial Times.

Japan to provide 9.5 million dollars in rice aid to Philippines

Japan will extend 9.5 million dollars in rice aid to hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the strife-torn southern Philippine region of Mindanao, a Japanese embassy statement said Monday. The aid will be in the form of 7,500 metric tons of rice, which will be distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) to people displaced by fighting between government troops and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels in Mindanao.