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The cyclone hit the southern African country just as the rainy season was tailing off with several rivers and water bodies already at high levels resulting in severe flooding.  This has inundated farmlands and destroyed produce – just as farmers were about to harvest the only crop of the year - compounding an already difficult year in which 3.8 million people need food assistance.

“This is a devastating blow to the Rohingya and an equally devastating blow to the humanitarian community,” said Domenico Scalpelli, WFP Country Director in Bangladesh.

Awad Adam and his wife Nafisa have been on the move ever since Sudan’s war broke out last April.

As the chilly winter sun rises, their red cheeks burned by the frozen air, Hamida and her friends skip merrily on the way to school against the majestic backdrop of mountains and a vast lake – the Nurek reservoir. The dawn mist slowly clears in the village of Chashma, perched high up a valley in southeast Tajikistan, as the laughter and bickering of children is heard in the schoolyard.&nbsp

In Gaza’s two northern governorates, where around 300,000 people remain trapped, famine is expected to arrive between now and May. The famine threshold for acute food insecurity has already been far exceeded, while acute malnutrition among children below five years is proceeding at record pace towards the second famine threshold.

 Children’s laughter rings out as Fartun Abdi Warsame prepares her family’s breakfast of rice and the vegetables – lentils, peppers, onions and tomatoes – that she grows on her farm in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region.

At the age of 17 years, Azza thought that marriage would change her life journey and pull her out of Gaza: out of deprivation and into indulgence. Azza's husband, Jamil, worked as a driver in Abu Dhabi and she hoped to join him there. But she never did. She stayed in Gaza throughout their marriage and as their family grew, she found herself managing a household with eight children.

An estimated 500,000 people are living in areas exposed to flooding in Ayeyarwady. Over the coming days, WFP plans to assist 35,000 flood-affected people in evacuation centres with rice and fortified biscuits. This assistance will be coupled with nutrition support for mothers and children to prevent acute malnutrition.

 The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza could soon escalate into famine unless immediate action is taken, the United National World Food Programme (WFP) warns.

 The floods tore through Halima Mustapha’s home in northeastern Nigeria late at night, giving the 27-year-old mother and her family no warning. They fled minutes before the building collapsed, unable to take even the most basic necessities.“We have not experienced this kind of flooding before,” says Mustapha, a widow and mother of two.