News releases

The United Nations calls for the targeting of new policies and investments in the lagging territories of Latin America and the Caribbean.

December 2, 2020, Santiago de Chile - A new United Nations report shows the territorial inequality of malnutrition in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

ANTANANARIVO – Southern Madagascar is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with 1.5 million people—half the region’s population—needing immediate emergency food assistance, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today. Three straight years of drought have wiped out harvests and hampered people's access to food and COVID-19 is compounding their suffering.

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.

GENEVA/ROME – A new report has found global hunger and population displacement - both already at record levels when COVID-19 struck - could surge as people on the move and those reliant on a dwindling flow of remittances desperately seek work to support their families.

MASERU – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes the European Union’s (EU) contribution of €2.8 million (M55.5 million) to provide much needed relief assistance to the most vulnerable people in Lesotho affected by three consecutive years of drought and the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

BAGHDAD – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched new projects in Iraq to help provide thousands of people with short-term employment opportunities, so they can start working again during the COVID-19 pandemic and meet their family’s food needs.

BEIRUT – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is radically expanding its support to a key Lebanese social assistance programme, with the goal of helping 270,000 people get through the triple shock caused by economic crisis, the COVID-19 lockdown and the blasts at Beirut port.

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.

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.

ROME – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today announced a massive rise in the number of hungry people it plans to assist around the world, as the devastating socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic push millions more people into food insecurity in low- and middle-income countries.

We are increasingly alarmed about the situation in Yemen.

COVID-19 is spreading rapidly across the country already experiencing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, driven by an unabated conflict. But we are ready to stay and deliver life-saving assistance to those who need it.

Vientiane – Rice and lentils donated by the United States arrived in Laos this week and was received by the U.S. Ambassador to Lao PDR, Dr. Peter M. Haymond today at WFP’s Vientiane warehouse.

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.

ROME/GENEVA – The first United Nations “Solidarity Flight” is scheduled to leave Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, today - from there, the aircraft will transport the vital medical cargo to all countries in Africa, where supplies are desperately needed to contain the spread of COVID-19.

HARARE – With Zimbabwe’s already severe climate- and recession-induced hunger crisis deepening and COVID-19 taking hold, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) urgently needs US$130 million to sustain through August an emergency operation to prevent millions of the country’s most vulnerable people plunging deeper into hunger.

Rome – The closure of schools around the world due to COVID-19 risks having a major impact on the health and nutrition of school children.

COLOMBO – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Skills for Inclusive Growth (S4IG), an initiative of the Australian Government, have signed an agreement to work together to promote healthy diets. One of the key features is a collaboration with Supreme Chef, a popular competitive cooking TV show in Sri Lanka.

COLOMBO – The Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network (SUN BN), led by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), today brought together thirty leading Sri Lankan businesses to pledge their support for three important agendas: improving workplace health and nutrition efforts; producing healthy food; and promoting healthy food consumption.

ROME – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will begin destroying global stocks of a blended food product, identified as a source of sickness among people who consumed it in Uganda earlier this year.

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.

The Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) has partnered with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to manage a warehouse WFP constructed for smallholder maize farmers in the Ejurasekyedumase Municipality.

NEW YORK: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today launched the next phase of a cinema ad campaign that has yielded dramatic results, generating a 40% increase in brand awareness in North America about WFP’s life-saving work on the frontlines of world hunger. The “Feed our Future” campaign is part of a unique partnership between SAWA, the Global Cinema Advertising Association, its network of Global Cinema Advertising companies and WFP, which is the leading humanitarian agency supporting development and responding to hunger needs in global hotspots.