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.

Aster Beyene, a 43-year-old mother of seven, who lost both her home and crops two months ago to conflict, became the 1 millionth person to collect wheat, split peas and vegetable oil from U.N. World Food Programme on Monday.

“Up until now I have relied on what little food I can get from my neighbors. At least now we have some relief from the hunger we have been suffering,” said Aster from Adi Millen, a remote rural village 31 miles from Shire in Northwestern zone. The U.N. World Food Programme provided food to the 4,500 villagers, bringing the first round of food distributions – which will be carried out every six weeks in Tigray – to a close.

“I am glad that the U.N. World Food Programme was able to bring the food to us here in Adi Millen, where we are far and cut off from many towns and markets,” Aster added.

• The U.N. World Food Programme is responsible for emergency food assistance across Northwestern and Southern zones of Tigray and will scale-up operations to reach 2.1 million people in need of food assistance across these operational areas. Since April, it has managed to access all 13 woredas (districts) of Northwestern and assisted 885,000 people. In addition, U.N. World Food Programme distributions began at the end of March in three woredas of Southern zone where 168,000 people have so far received the U.N. World Food Programme emergency food, bringing the total to 1.05 million people. In March, before the U.N. World Food Programme was assigned Northwestern and Southern zones, the U.N. World Food Programme had assisted 33,000 people in Eastern zone.
• This week, the U.N. World Food Programme kicked off a second six-week round of emergency food assistance, starting in Korem and Ofla, two of five new woredas in Southern zone recently added to WFP’s operational areas. Within the first few days of operations, the U.N. World Food Programme expects to assist about 80,000 people of the nearly 200,000 target population.
• In addition, the U.N. World Food Programme leads the emergency nutrition response across all Tigray with partners and is scaling up to reach people in as many as 70 woredas. Access, especially in rural areas, remains the primary challenge. The U.N. World Food Programme has delivered 315,000 emergency nutrition rations to children and women since February in 31 woredas. In May, the U.N. World Food Programme reached almost 100,000 children and pregnant or nursing women in all zones except for Western.
• As well as supporting the overall response, the U.N. World Food Programme has delivered 40,000 metric tons of food for the Government and partners to Tigray and has transported 48,501,698 pounds for National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) within the region.
• A total of 5.2 million people, 91 percent of Tigray’s population, need emergency food assistance due to conflict since last November.
• Ahead of the results of a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) study of levels of hunger across Tigray, the U.N. World Food Programme is highly concerned at the number of people we see in need of nutrition support and emergency food assistance and is doing all it can to reach 2.1 million people in need in the coming months.
• However, the U.N. World Food Programme needs $203 million to continue to scale up its response in Tigray to save lives and livelihoods through to the end of the year.

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The United Nations World Food Programme is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.  We are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

Follow us on Twitter @WFPUSA, @wfp_media and @wfp_ethiopia

LONDON – A survey on attitudes to food waste in six countries, released on the eve of World Food Day (October 16), has found that in the UK more than half of those surveyed say they don’t waste food and that wasting food is morally wrong.

The survey, carried out by IPSOS on behalf of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), questioned people in Canada, Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, United States of America and United Arab Emirates.

“The U.N. World Food Programme has been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, highlighting the value of food as a basic human right and the terrible and increasing toll of hunger brought about by conflict,” said Jane Howard, Head of Communications, Advocacy and Marketing in the U.N. World Food Programme’s UK Office. “But let’s not forget there’s enough food in the world to feed everyone, and if we could increase awareness and reverse current food waste trends, we could save enough food to feed 2 billion people.”

Some 68 percent of the 1,000 respondents in the UK survey said they didn’t waste food, second only to UAE (70 percent) and ahead of Germany (66 percent), Canada (54 percent), USA (53 percent) and South Korea (48 percent). Across all six countries, those over the age of 55 (72 percent) were more likely to indicate that they don’t waste food than those in the 15 – 34 age bracket (52 percent). Younger people were more likely (20 percent) to indicate that they would like to waste less food but don’t know how to do so.

When asked why they thought it was important not to waste food, the British (56 percent), Germans (52 percent) and residents of the UAE (69 percent) were most likely to say that it was morally wrong, whereas in the Canada and the USA, the most common answer was that having consistent access to food was a privilege. In South Korea the main reason people gave was that they wanted to live more sustainably, for example by reducing their environmental footprint, cited by 60 percent of respondents as opposed to 42 percent in the UK and 33 percent in Germany. The report is available here.

The U.N. World Food Programme has been running a #StopTheWaste awareness-raising campaign which began on the UN’s first International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste on September 29 and will culminate tomorrow on World Food Day. For more details, go to wfp.org/foodwaste.

The U.N. World Food Programme’s UK Office will co-host a virtual Chef’s Table, entitled Preserving the Value of Food, where guests are invited to cook along with chefs Anahita Dhondhy and Arthur Potts Dawson. They will learn how to preserve food through a simple pickling recipe, learn about the U.N. World Food Programme’s work with women farmers in Bangladesh and take part in a discussion on the value of food. To register for the free session, taking place at 12.30pm UK time on 3 November, click here.

Globally, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to about 1.3 billion tons per year. The financial costs of food wastage amount to about $1 trillion each year.

Food is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain, from initial agricultural production where food may rot on the farm because of poor storage to final household consumption where it is forgotten at the back of a fridge. #StopTheWaste aims to spotlight the global issue of food waste and highlight simple and creative solutions we can all take to prevent it.

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The U.N. World Food Programme is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.  We are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

Follow us on Twitter @WFPUSA @wfp_media and @WFP_UK

For more information, contact:

Jane Howard, WFP/ London, Mob. +44 (0)796 8008 474
Jessica Andrews, WFP/ Rome, Mob. +39 342 648 1694