News releases

DAMASCUS – After a decade of upheaval, conflict and displacement, Syrians are facing the worst humanitarian conditions since the start of the crisis, with millions of people sliding into hunger in the last year alone, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

ADEN/SANA’A – The Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme issued an urgent plea for peace in Yemen and called for funding to help the most vulnerable hungry families as he wrapped up a two-day visit to the country where the worst famine the world has seen in modern history is now looming.

KINSHASA– Reaffirming the United Nations World Food Programme’s commitment to build stronger communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, David Beasley, today, concluded a visit to the country which included a meeting with the Country’s new President, Félix Tshisekedi.

CAIRO – A record 12.4 million Syrians - nearly 60 percent of the population - are now food insecure, according to alarming new national data from the UN World Food Programme (WFP). In just over one year, an additional 4.5 million Syrians have become food insecure.

Humanitarian crisis continues to exert a terrible toll on children, warn FAO, UNICEF, WFP and WHO

SANA’A/ADEN/ROME/NEW YORK/GENEVA - Nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five in Yemen are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, four United Nations agencies warned today. Of these, 400,000 are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and could die if they do not receive urgent treatment.

OUAGADOUGOU – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a 3.5-million-euro (US$4.2 million) contribution from Italy to provide food assistance and develop early-recovery projects for tens of thousands of people affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Burkina Faso.

Johannesburg - Escalating conflict and a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Cabo Delgado has left communities completely reliant on humanitarian assistance. According to the Government, attacks by non-state groups have forced more than 565,000 people to flee their homes and villages, abandoning their crops and livelihoods.

SEOUL/DAKAR – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a $US500,000 contribution from the Government of the Republic of Korea to our operations in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, which will help support the emergency response in Central Sahel, and provide school meals for thousands of young pupils.

NEW YORK – The World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director, David Beasley, addressed United Nations Security Council today on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Here are selected highlights from his remarks:

DAMASCUS – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Syria welcomes a generous donation of US$20 million from the Russian Federation to provide food assistance for up to 2.3 million Syrians – including nutritional support for mothers and children.

MAPUTO – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a contribution of SEK 30 million (US$3.5 million) from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) to help meet the food and nutrition needs of people affected by the conflict in Cabo Delgado.

OUAGADOUGOU – A donation of € 4.2 million from the European Union (EU) contributed to WFP’s efforts to stave off a hunger catastrophe in Burkina Faso, where 2 million people are struggling to feed themselves due to the combined effects of conflict, climate shocks and the socio-economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Levels of hunger reach record levels, requiring urgent action

SANA’A/ROME/NEW YORK – The window to prevent famine in Yemen is narrowing as new figures reveal record highs of acute food insecurity in the country, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF warned today.

KHARTOUM - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is calling for US$24.6 million to meet the immediate needs of Ethiopian refugees seeking safety in Sudan. The conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia that escalated on 4 November, has forced more than 30,000 Ethiopians to flee across the border into Sudan.

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.

One in five children under five in parts of Yemen are estimated to be acutely malnourished and in urgent need of treatment as malnutrition cases increase across the south, UN agencies warn.

ADEN – Acute malnutrition rates among children under five are the highest ever recorded in parts of Yemen, with more than half a million cases in southern districts, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Malnutrition analysis released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and partners.

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.

LONDON – To urge action on addressing the urgent risk of famine, the UK’s first Special Envoy for Famine Prevention and Humanitarian Affairs Nick Dyer met the United Nations World Food Programme’s Executive Director David Beasley to jointly call for other countries to step up.

MAPUTO – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a donation from the Government of Norway towards emergency operations in the humanitarian crisis-stricken province of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique. Norway’s contribution of 10 million Norwegian Kroner (approx. US$1 million) will enable WFP to assist 32,000 Internally Displaced Populations through in-kind food assistance for a period of two months. Ongoing insurgent armed attacks in the northernmost districts of Cabo Delgado province have displaced over 300,000 people as of September 2020, who seeked refuge in Nampula, Niassa and Zambezia provinces.

OUAGADOUGOU – Urgent and sustained action is needed to address worsening food and nutrition insecurity in Burkina Faso, say the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), citing alarming new data. Some 3.3 million people are estimated to be facing acute food insecurity during the current lean season, that period which precedes the harvest in September.

JUBA - Recurring violence in Jonglei and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area in the eastern part of South Sudan has already displaced more than 60,000 people and is crippling the food security and livelihoods of growing numbers of people, two United Nations agencies warned today.

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

Paletwa, MYANMAR – This week the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has commenced distribution of a newly-arrived tranche of 165 tons of emergency food and nutrition assistance for communities affected by conflict in Paletwa Town in remote southern Chin State, which has been largely cut off from regular trade and supply routes for many months.

Kabul – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a new contribution of EUR 3.6 million from the European Union (EU) that will help provide lifesaving assistance to the most vulnerable Afghans affected by natural and man-made disasters.

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.