News releases

DUBAI/ROME – As a humanitarian crisis builds on the Ethiopia-Sudan border, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a contribution of US$4.5 million from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to provide life-saving food assistance to refugees fleeing escalating violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

ROME – The COVID-19 pandemic is reversing development gains and testing the foundations of global peace, yet it also presents an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate in helping governments and communities build back better. This is the core theme of a high-level virtual meeting in Rome today (1500 CET), bringing together top representatives of the United Na-tions, international financial institutions, African Union and European Union and governments.

ROME – Millions of people in Central America urgently need food assistance in the wake of Hurricane Eta, one of the worst storms in decades, as fears grow of another storm brewing in the coming days.

Transcript as delivered of remarks by UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley during today’s UN Security Council consultation on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

NEW YORK –

I honestly wish I had some good news. It seems like a repeat performance of what we have done in 2018, 2019. I would literally like to be pretty clear and pretty blunt about the situation because I don’t want a single person to leave here with any doubt about the scale of the humanitarian disaster that we’re now confronting in Yemen.

ROME – The world has been put on a heightened famine alert with a new report by two United Nations agencies that contains a stark warning; four countries contain areas that could soon slip into famine if conditions there undergo “any further deterioration over the coming months”. These are Burkina Faso in West Africa’s Sahel region, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

MANAGUA – As powerful Hurricane Eta makes landfall along the northern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), at the request of the Government, has positioned 80 metric tons of food assistance in the region. The Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 240 km/h, is bringing heavy rain and causing damage to homes, agricultural fields, roads and power lines.

BANGKOK – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a new contribution of US$800,000 from the Republic of Korea. The funding will go towards WFP’s emergency operations in Bangladesh and Myanmar in the Asia and the Pacific region.

WINDHOEK – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a contribution of €2million (N$40 million) from the European Union (EU), which will help WFP deliver critical food assistance to 30,000 vulnerable people in Namibia affected by COVID-19 and drought.

Khartoum - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Sudan has welcomed a contribution of US$1.7 million from the Government of Japan to support vulnerable people whose livelihoods and food security are most at risk because of desert locust swarms that migrated to Sudan from Kenya and South Sudan earlier this year.

KANO – The Nigerian Government and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today launched a cash and food assistance programme in the three urban COVID-19 hotspots of Abuja, Kano and Lagos. The Government has released 2,000 metric tons of food from its Strategic Grain Reserve (valued at US$1 million), while WFP is releasing US$3 million to provide cash assistance.

GUATEMALA CITY – Undernutrition, overweight and obesity cost Guatemala US$12 billion in 2018 amounting to a significant 16.3 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to a report released today by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Resources lost to malnutrition take away from hard won development gains.

SANA’A – Yemen is at a tipping point as conflict and economic woes drag the country to the brink of famine and risk cancelling out the gains made through humanitarian action in the past few years, the United Nations World Food Programme warns today.

BEIRUT – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is radically expanding its support to a key Lebanese social assistance programme, with the goal of helping 270,000 people get through the triple shock caused by economic crisis, the COVID-19 lockdown and the blasts at Beirut port.

MAPUTO – WFP is extremely concerned about the escalating conflict and deteriorating food security situation in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, where over 300,000 people have fled their homes and villages, abandoning their crops and leaving them completely reliant on humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling up emergency food assistance to reach nearly 160,000 people across Sudan following floods that ravaged 17 of the country’s 18 states.

Sittwe, Myanmar – In support of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement (MoSWRR), the Rakhine State Government and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) have signed an agreement for the provision of short-term food assistance at quarantine centers across Rakhine State. Under the agreement, which was signed in the first week of September, people undergoing mandatory quarantine at eight townships in Rakhine State will receive three nutritious meals a day, funded by WFP, throughout the quarantine period.

Beirut – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley announced today that the organization is bringing 17,500 metric tons of wheat flour and a three-month supply of wheat into Lebanon to help replenish the country’s food reserves as part of a rapid logistics operation that will also involve setting up warehouses and mobile grain storage units.

Contains Yemen visual content, data points and quotes for covering the report

ROME – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today announced a massive rise in the number of hungry people it plans to assist around the world, as the devastating socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic push millions more people into food insecurity in low- and middle-income countries.

DAMASCUS – Syrians today face an unprecedented hunger crisis as the prices of basic foods reach levels unseen even at the height of the nine-year conflict and millions of people are pushed deeper into poverty, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said, on the eve of a donors pledging conference for Syria.

ROME – With much of the world’s commercial transport systems, particularly airlines, grounded by COVID-19, WFP - the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger and a global leader in logistics – has stepped in to move passengers and huge volumes of health and other supplies needed in the fight against the pandemic.

TRIPOLI/TUNIS – UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the World Food Programme, WFP, are joining forces in Libya in a project that will aim to reach up to 10,000 food insecure refugees and asylum seekers with emergency food aid this year.

SAN SALVADOR - Damage caused by Tropical Storm Amanda which lashed El Salvador is compounding the socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and is set to increase the number of food insecure people in El Salvador, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.

KHARTOUM – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Sudan received a contribution of US$1 million from the Government of Japan, for the treatment of acute malnutrition of 127,000 infants, mothers and pregnant women in Central and West Darfur states.

HARARE – With Zimbabwe’s already severe climate- and recession-induced hunger crisis deepening and COVID-19 taking hold, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) urgently needs US$130 million to sustain through August an emergency operation to prevent millions of the country’s most vulnerable people plunging deeper into hunger.