News releases

ROME – A United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) flight managed by WFP and operated by our longstanding aviation services partner – Abyssinia Flight Services - was forced to make a crash landing on the afternoon of Tuesday July 27, whilst transporting passengers between Jigjiga and Dire Dawa.

ADDIS ABABA – The first United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) passenger flight, which is managed by the United Nations World Food Programme, has touched down at Tigray’s Alula Aba Nega International Airport in Mekelle today.

ADDIS ABABA – A United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) convoy of 50 trucks arrived in the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle today with 900 metric tons of food as well as other emergency supplies. However, double this number of trucks needs to be moving in every day to meet the vast humanitarian needs in the region.

ADDIS ABABA – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has resumed its operations in the Tigray region of Ethiopia after fighting halted the emergency response last week. However serious challenges are threatening the entire humanitarian response in the region.

ROME – Alarming new data has today confirmed the magnitude of the hunger emergency gripping Tigray, where at least 4 million people face severe hunger and 350 000 of them are facing famine. The lack of information on people’s food security in western Tigray in the IPC analysis is also deeply worrying.

10 June 2021, Rome - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF call for urgent action to address the dramatic acute food insecurity in northern Ethiopia. The three agencies are particularly concerned about the situation in Tigray region where the risk of famine is imminent, unless food, livelihood assistance and other life-saving interventions continue to be scaled-up, unimpeded access is guaranteed, and hostilities cease.

MEKELE – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has provided emergency food assistance to 1 million people since starting distributions in Northwestern and Southern zones of Tigray region in March.

ADDIS ABABA – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a US$400,000 contribution from the Government of the Republic of Korea to our operations in Ethiopia’s Tigray region to help provide food and nutrition support for thousands of people displaced by conflict.

ADDIS ABABA –  The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has begun providing emergency food assistance to vulnerable people in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region but urgently needs US$170 million to meet critical food and nutrition needs over the next six months, and to be able to cover any sudden increase.

ROME – Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance, warn the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) in a new report issued today.

ADDIS ABABA/ROME – The World Food Programme (WFP) affirms the need for strong partnership between the Government of Ethiopia and the entire humanitarian community to rapidly scale up a collective response to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of people in Tigray.

ADDIS ABABA/ROME - Today, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, David Beasley, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ethiopia, Catherine Sozi, and the Federal Minister of Peace of the Government of Ethiopia, Muferihat Kamil, completed a joint visit to Mekelle in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, aiming to highlight the need for strong partnership to rapidly scale up a Government-led collective response to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of people in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region.

ADDIS ABABA – Eritrean refugees in two camps in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia received a month’s worth of food supplies through a joint distribution by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugees and Returnee Affairs (ARRA).

BEIJING - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of China have signed agreements to provide food assistance to vulnerable people in Ethiopia and Guinea whose food security is being further undermined by the socio-economic effects of COVID-19. The resulting loss of jobs in the casual labour market and the loss of remittances sent from abroad have had a huge impact on poor familes in many parts of the world.

Geneva/ Rome - UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the World Food Programme (WFP) are warning that severe underfunding, conflict and disasters – as well as supply chain challenges, rising food prices and loss of income due to COVID19 - threaten to leave millions of refugees across Africa without food.

ADDIS ABABA – A funding shortfall of US$158 million this year is threatening millions of people in Ethiopia who depend on food and nutrition assistance for their very survival.

Three-year initiative aims to support the Government of Ethiopia in preventing acute malnutrition among children and mothers in 100 districts and promoting health and nutrition in 600 schools.

NAIROBI – The dire socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic may more than double the number of hungry people in East Africa and the Horn over the next three months, a report from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has found.

ROME/GENEVA – The first United Nations “Solidarity Flight” is scheduled to leave Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, today - from there, the aircraft will transport the vital medical cargo to all countries in Africa, where supplies are desperately needed to contain the spread of COVID-19.

ADDIS ABABA – The Government of Ethiopia and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) opened a new hub inside Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport from which COVID-19 supplies, equipment and humanitarian workers will be transported by air across Ethiopia and Africa.

Joint statement by QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); Mark Lowcock, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator; and David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

ADDIS ABABA – The Government of Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today launched a global convening on how to provide ‘Transformative Food Assistance for Zero Hunger.’

ADDIS ABABA – The World Food Programme (WFP) in Ethiopia is distributing life-saving food in the Dawa Zone of Somali Region following a spate of interruptions over the past 11 months due to security issues.

ADDIS ABABA - A new accord with the Government of Ethiopia will see the World Food Programme (WFP) develop national capacity in managing the Ethio-Djibouti land corridor and port operations.

ADDIS ABABA – The heads of the United Nations World Food Programme and UNICEF in Ethiopia have made a joint visit to Somali Region of Ethiopia to see firsthand how people affected by recent violence and civil unrest are being assisted.