Special Interest: Emergency Response
Nearly the entire population of Gaza is in desperate need of food assistance, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.
Climate extremes will keep hunger in Somalia at record highs, warned WFP today, as deadly floods sweep the country, devastating deeply food-insecure communities who are still battling to recover from the country’s longest recorded drought.
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain issued an urgent plea from the Rafah border crossing for safe, expanded humanitarian access to Gaza as humanitarian needs skyrocket and critical food supplies reach dangerously low levels.
One WFP employee describes the horror, the grief, her dreams for a better future, and why her work must go on in the face of it all.
United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will provide an additional $1 billion to help address critical global hunger needs.
Thousands of civilians on Sunday morning stormed a UN-run warehouse in Gaza’s middle area, where WFP is storing some food commodities.
The catastrophic conditions facing hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza risk getting worse still, due to severe fuel shortages which threaten to bring food and other humanitarian operations to a standstill.
WFP welcomed today’s opening of the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which enabled a first convoy of trucks to bring in urgently needed food, water and other supplies for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza.
WFP is stockpiling 310 metric tons of food at the Gaza border ready for dispatch to people in desperate need – as soon as humanitarian access is granted.
As humanitarian supplies converged on Egypt’s border with Gaza, WFP renewed its call for sustained humanitarian access to Gaza.
“The situation is devastating,” said Samer Abdeljaber, WFP Palestine Country Director. “We are on the ground doing everything we can."
WFP calls on all parties to uphold the principles of humanitarian law to safeguard the lives and well-being of civilians, including access to food.