Special Interest: Conflict
A new report hammers home the need for billions of dollars in investment to keep hunger from deepening its tentacles further into vulnerable locations across the world.
The sheer scale and complexity of the challenges in Africa and other regions will stretch the resources and capacity of WFP and other agencies to the limit.
As a result of this year’s severe drought, economic downturn and Cyclone Idai, around 8 million people have been pushed into severe hunger in Zimbabwe.
The four walls (and no roof) that Osman and his family call home is a building formerly used as a toilet. It took them four days to clean out. But still, his family is comparatively lucky.
Shadia, age 15, was displaced from her home in south Idlib in Syria in early September and now lives in a camp in north Idlib.
WFP has achieved an unprecedented expansion of food assistance in Yemen, scaling it up by 50 percent. But still, over 11 million people continue to face a daily struggle of finding enough food.
WFP is in a race against time to mobilize vital funds to feed millions of people in South Sudan as hunger advances on a population in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The Mt. Lebanon famine killed 200,000 people between 1915 and 1918. The situation in Syria today looks eerily similar.
With their homes destroyed and their husbands killed, the women and children who fled Boko Haram in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon have nowhere to turn.
"They all have terrible stories,” says Amina, whose son was kidnapped by fighters. “Some have lost loved ones along the way and some have even lost their memories because of the trauma they have suffered.”
The Central Sahel is in crisis, yet "nobody is truly interested and everyone just stands by watching tragedy develop in front of our eyes,” says WFP's Margot van der Velden.
WFP warns of an escalating humanitarian crisis driven by widespread violence and the long-term impact of climate change that has gripped Burkina Faso and neighboring countries in the Central Sahel region of West Africa.