News releases

ADDIS ABABA/ROME – The World Food Programme (WFP) affirms the need for strong partnership between the Government of Ethiopia and the entire humanitarian community to rapidly scale up a collective response to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of people in Tigray.

DUBAI/ROME – As a humanitarian crisis builds on the Ethiopia-Sudan border, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a contribution of US$4.5 million from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to provide life-saving food assistance to refugees fleeing escalating violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

Suva, Fiji – As the 2020 Pacific cyclone season is now upon us, the World Food Programme is launching a website to highlight the need for donating responsibly after disasters. Launched today the DonateResponsibly website aims to educate and inform Australian and New Zealand audiences about why donating goods overseas after disasters can be unhelpful and even harmful. Its mission is to promote more effective ways to donate.

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.

ROME – The world has been put on a heightened famine alert with a new report by two United Nations agencies that contains a stark warning; four countries contain areas that could soon slip into famine if conditions there undergo “any further deterioration over the coming months”. These are Burkina Faso in West Africa’s Sahel region, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

MANAGUA – As powerful Hurricane Eta makes landfall along the northern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), at the request of the Government, has positioned 80 metric tons of food assistance in the region. The Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 240 km/h, is bringing heavy rain and causing damage to homes, agricultural fields, roads and power lines.

AMMAN, 8 October 2020 - UN Agencies* in the region unveiled today “Rej’et El Sineh” [‘Learning is Back’], a song to encourage the return to learning for all children and youth across the region.

BEIRUT – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Lebanon is stepping up its response to the explosion that ripped through the capital in August by providing cash assistance for up to 50,000 people (10,000 families), to help them meet basic needs such as food and healthcare.

Khartoum - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Sudan has welcomed a contribution of US$1.7 million from the Government of Japan to support vulnerable people whose livelihoods and food security are most at risk because of desert locust swarms that migrated to Sudan from Kenya and South Sudan earlier this year.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling up emergency food assistance to reach nearly 160,000 people across Sudan following floods that ravaged 17 of the country’s 18 states.

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA– The Pacific humanitarian air service launched a flight today, delivering 6.5 tonnes of essential medical cargo and moving humanitarian personnel to support the COVID-19 response in Fiji, Kiribati and Nauru.

London - The GSMA and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are expanding their partnership to help the world’s most vulnerable people. Through the GSMA Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation programme, which has been funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) since 2017, this three-year collaboration will primarily focus on the use of mobile money to deliver digital assistance through cash-based transfers to save lives in global emergencies, including pandemics and natural disasters.

Release is the fastest funding allocation from the Central Emergency Response Fund in UN history

MOROTO, Uganda –The Government of Uganda and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are distributing take-home food rations to school children in the Karamoja sub-region in north-eastern Uganda to support home-learning while schools remain closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak across the country.

KAMPALA – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) received US$1 million from the Government of Denmark today to assist refugees in Kampala struggling because of the socio-economic impact of lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The UN’s Humanitarian Chief, Mark Lowcock, has called for swift and determined action to avoid the most destabilizing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as he releases a $6.7 billion appeal and an updated global plan to fight coronavirus in fragile countries.

ROME/LIÈGE – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has kick-started a network of global logistics hubs that will support the entire aid community and ensure the delivery of vital medical and humanitarian supplies to developing countries at a time when commercial air transport is at a virtual standstill.

NEW YORK/PARIS/ROME, 30 April 2020 – UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP and World Bank today issued new guidelines on the safe reopening of schools amidst ongoing closures affecting nearly 1.3 billion students worldwide.

TEHRAN – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has received from the Government of Japan the largest ever single contribution to its operations in Iran. WFP will use the US$7 million grant for its COVID-19 response to support Iranian health workers and strengthen the resilience of the refugee community in Iran.

ANKARA – As Syria enters its 10th year of conflict, which has forced more than 5.6 million people to flee their country, a survey of a major WFP cash assistance scheme in Türkiye indicates that European Union-funded support has helped prevent 1.7 million vulnerable refugees – mostly Syrians – from falling deeper into poverty.

ROME – The World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a contribution of €3 million from the European Union (EU), which will strengthen global efforts to eradicate hunger and malnutrition by supporting the Committee on World Food Security.

KHARTOUM- The Government of Sudan and development partners including the World Food Programme (WFP) officially extended until 2021 an agreement that supports the development of a national law making salt iodization mandatory. The fourteen-party Universal Salt Iodization Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) includes a number of ministries.

DHAKA – Representatives from government ministries, development partners, academia, thinktanks and UN agencies, are gathering in Dhaka today to discuss the role social safety nets play in addressing climate change, building community resilience and helping Bangladesh achieve the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

TEHRAN – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today received additional contributions for flood relief operations in support of nearly 12,400 people for one month in Iran’s Lorestan province.

NAIROBI – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Kenya’s Ministry of Devolution and the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) have agreed to collaborate on the coordination, formulation and implementation of policies on food security, resilience building and relief assistance to achieve food and nutrition security in Kenya.