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	Severe food shortages hit Africa's refugees hard by WFP, UN High Commissioner for Refugees   Feb. 2017   The Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Ertharin Cousin and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, are very concerned that critical shortages in food assistance are affecting some 2 million refugees in 10 countries across Africa.   The shortages could worsen in coming months without new resources to meet food needs.   The number of refugees in Africa nearly doubled from 2.6 million in 2011 to nearly 5 million in 2016. While donor funding for refugee assistance increased during this period, it did not keep pace with rapidly rising needs. As a result, the humanitarian response is significantly underfunded. This has forced cuts in food assistance for some groups of refugees.   The two agency heads warn that food shortages will have dire consequences on the health and protection of such vulnerable people, unless more support is urgently made available.   'We can't imagine how difficult life is for thousands of refugee families with no food, and often denied the possibility to work or provide for themselves in other ways. Refugees are extraordinarily resilient, but cuts in food assistance - sometimes as high as 50 percent - are having a devastating impact on the health and nutrition of thousands of families', said UNHCR's Grandi.   'The right to food is a basic human right. We are working with WFP to ensure that no refugee goes to sleep hungry, but support has to come quickly'.   'Millions of refugees depend on WFP food and our work to treat and prevent malnutrition to stay alive. But in Africa they are in danger of being overshadowed by large humanitarian crises elsewhere', said Cousin. 'No refugee deserves to be abandoned and left behind'.   UNHCR and WFP recognize the very concerning food security and nutrition situation in the Horn of Africa and the unprecedented needs for assistance. Individuals are fleeing Somalia and South Sudan and arriving as refugees in critical condition. Over 75 percent of the Somali refugee children who have arrived in Dollo Ado in Ethiopia since January were acutely malnourished.   Ten refugee operations in Africa have experienced cuts affecting the quantity and quality of food assistance for approximately 2 million refugees. Food rations have been dramatically cut - in some cases by up to 50 percent - in large operations including Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Mauritania, South Sudan and Uganda.   Refugees in Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Burundi and Ethiopia have had specific commodities cut including micronutrient fortified blended foods, needed to ensure an adequate quality diet.   UNHCR and WFP are concerned that sustained cuts to food assistance will have severe nutrition and protection-related consequences as refugees try to cope by skipping meals, pulling their children out of schools to stay at home or work and selling family assets.   The nutritional situation of these refugees before the cuts to food assistance was already worrying and is now worsening. Nutrition surveys in 2016 documented high levels of acute malnutrition, anaemia and stunting. In many refugee sites in Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan and Djibouti acute malnutrition is critical and anaemia is greater than 40 percent, indicating a public health crisis. Visit the related web page
	World hunger again on the rise, driven by conflict and climate change by FAO-WFP news release World Food Programme, UN Food and Agriculture Organization   Sept. 2017   World hunger again on the rise, driven by conflict and climate change. 815 million people now hungry. Millions of children at risk from malnutrition.   Global hunger is on the rise again, affecting 815 million people in 2016, says the annual United Nations report on world food security and nutrition released this week. At the same time, multiple forms of malnutrition are threatening the health of millions worldwide.   The increase - 38 million more people than the previous year - is largely due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017.   Some 155 million children aged under five are stunted (too short for their age), the report says, while 52 million suffer from wasting, meaning their weight is too low for their height.   Anaemia among women and adult obesity are also cause for concern. These trends are a consequence not only of conflict and climate change but also of sweeping changes in dietary habits as well as economic slowdowns.   The report is the first UN global assessment on food security and nutrition to be released following the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 as a top international policy priority.   It singles out conflict - increasingly compounded by climate change - as one of the key drivers behind the resurgence of hunger and many forms of malnutrition.   "Over the past decade, conflicts have risen dramatically in number and become more complex and intractable in nature," the heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in their joint foreword to the report. They stressed that some of the highest proportions of food-insecure and malnourished children in the world are now concentrated in conflict zones.   "This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition. Securing peaceful and inclusive societies is a necessary condition to that end," they said.   Famine struck in parts of South Sudan for several months in early 2017, and there is a high risk that it could reoccur there as well as appear in other conflict-affected places, namely northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, they noted.   But even in regions that are more peaceful droughts or floods linked in part to the El Nino weather phenomenon, as well as the global economic slowdown, have also seen food security and nutrition deteriorate, they added.   http://www.wfp.org/content/global-report-food-crisis-2017 http://www.ipcinfo.org/   Aug. 2016   Protracted conflicts affecting 17 countries have driven millions of people into severe food insecurity and are hindering global efforts to eradicate malnutrition, two UN agencies have warned in a report submitted to the UN Security Council.   A new series of 17 country briefs prepared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) and published today finds that conflicts have now pushed over 56 million people into either "crisis" or "emergency" levels of food insecurity when expressed in terms used by the Integrated Food Security Classification Phase (IPC) scale.   Topping the list in terms of the sheer numbers of people whose food security is being negatively impacted by ongoing conflict are Yemen, where 14 million people - over half the population - are now in a state of hunger crisis or emergency on the IPC scale, and Syria, where 8.7 million people - 37 percent of the pre-conflict population - need urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.   In South Sudan where the situation is rapidly deteriorating 4.8 million people - some 40 percent of the population - are in need of urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.   And in countries coming out of extended periods of civil strife such as the Central African Republic and Colombia millions of people are still wrestling with high levels of food insecurity.   In other countries, while the overall absolute numbers of people facing food insecurity are lower, the share of people experiencing severe levels of food insecurity accounts for over half of the total population.   A staggering 89 percent of all Syrian refugees currently in Lebanon require urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance. In Burundi and Haiti, 23 percent and 19 percent of people are at IPC level 3 or 4, respectively, while in the Central African Republic, 50 percent of the population is at IPC scale 3 or worse.   Noting in their introduction to the briefs that "conflict is a leading cause of hunger - each famine in the modern era has been characterized by conflict," FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva and WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin underscore how hunger feeds violence and drives further instability.   "Conflict undermines food security in multiple ways: destroying crops, livestock and agricultural infrastructure, disrupting markets, causing displacement, creating fear and uncertainty over fulfilling future needs, damaging human capital and contributing to the spread of disease among others. Conflict also creates access problems for governments and humanitarian organizations, which often struggle to reach those in need," they note.   "Addressing hunger can be a meaningful contribution to peacebuilding," they argue, adding: "The 2030 Agenda recognizes peace as a vital threshold condition for development, as well as a development outcome in its own right."   The most recent estimates suggest that approximately half of the global poor now live in states characterized by conflict and violence.   People living in such places can be up to three times more likely to be undernourished than those living in more stable areas.   Post-conflict countries with high food insecurity are 40 percent more likely to relapse into conflict within a 10-year timespan if hunger levels are not addressed.   The briefs shared with the Security Council today cover 17 countries where conflict has significantly affected food security: in Latin America and the Caribbean, Haiti and Colombia; in Africa, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan; in the Middle East, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen; and in Asia, Afghanistan.   An additional brief on the regional Lake Chad crisis affecting Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon was also submitted. There, violence associated with Boko Haram has seen the numbers of displaced people triple over the past two years accompanied by rising levels of hunger and malnutrition.   http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/protracted-conflicts-causing-alarming-spikes-severe-hunger http://www.fao.org/3/a-c0335e.pdf http://www.fao.org/emergencies/crisis/fightingfamine/en/   Families in urgent need of lifesaving food. (WFP)   The World Food Programme (WFP) is currently facing five emergencies at the same time. We are on the ground providing assistance in Syria, Iraq, Southern Africa, South Sudan and Yemen. Families in each of these countries are in urgent need of lifesaving food. Read more about these crises.   Syria   The humanitarian situation in Syria continues to deteriorate. The fighting is driving more and more people from their homes and making access to food increasingly difficult. WFP is struggling to meet the urgent food needs of more than five million displaced people inside Syria and in neighbouring countries. Operations are being run on a hand-to-mouth basis as funding is running out.   Iraq   The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in Iraq in the wake of ongoing violence. More than three million people have been displaced and many are living without access to food, water or other essentials. Each month WFP works to provide food assistance to 1.5 million displaced people across Iraq's 18 governorates. WFP urgently needs US$50 million to continue to reach people with assistance for the rest of 2015.   Nigeria   Boko Haram violence has led to one of the most acute and sorely neglected humanitarian crises in the world. As more areas of northeastern Nigeria become accessible, the scale of the human tragedy is becoming apparent. In pockets of northeastern Nigeria, food insecurity has reached an extreme level.   Southern Africa   Southern Africa is facing a major food security crisis following successive years of drought, most recently as a result of the El Nino weather event which meant reduced rains for the region's crucial 2015-16 agricultural season. Many countries experienced poor or failed harvests, leaving millions of people with little or no food to sustain them till next year's harvest.   South Sudan   An recent analysis estimates that 4.6 million people, or 40 percent of the South Sudan population, face acute hunger in the next three months - the lean season. As part of the broad response in South Sudan, WFP has reached more than 2.5 million people this year. But it is critical to sustaining relief efforts because the situation remains very fragile. A hunger catastrophe will be a threat well into next year, especially if fighting continues.   Yemen   In Yemen, millions of people are cut off from food, water, electricity and other basic needs in a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation. Severe fuel shortages are expected to push people into hunger. Initial findings show that southern Yemen will have the highest number of food insecure people in the country. Yemen also has one of the highest child malnutrition rates in the world. Around half of all children under five are stunted; too short for their age as a result of malnutrition.   http://www.wfp.org/videos http://www.unicef.org/appeals/ Visit the related web page
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