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“When we saw bombs in our square, the place where I live, where I was born, where I work, it was the minute where I understood what has happened,” says Nina, a university professor who fled Kharkiv for Dnipro in eastern Ukraine, as she struggles to hold back tears. Nina is among 7 million people left internally displaced following the start of the war in Ukraine.

“Tens of millions of people are staring into an abyss.

The Horn of Africa is experiencing the driest conditions recorded since 1981, with severe drought leaving an estimated 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia facing severe hunger in the first quarter of this year, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned.

Led by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the two-day high-level conference is entitled, “Investing in homegrown school meals to strengthen human capital, women's economic empowerment and contribute to economic development”.

As Chief Financial Officer of the World Food Programme (WFP), I take a personal interest in ensuring that we demonstrate accountability and transparency.  Our donors – private individuals, and governments and their taxpayers – demand it, but we also owe it to our millions of beneficiaries to maximise value for money.

The roundtable, which was conducted with the support of WFP, was the beginning of a series of discussions around food fortification issues, particularly wheat fortification.

“This support from ECHO has been crucial for WFP to implement its emergency response.

 “My child is always crying,” says farmer Martha Kalumbi. “Doctors tell me she is starving and getting malnourished. I’m afraid that my baby may die.”Kalumbi, 40, lives in the village of Thumpwa in Malawi’s Phalombe district, where the fields look torched by drought.With the maize crop destroyed, there is barely any food. “The situation really hurts.

Below is an edited version of remarks delivered by World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Valerie Guarnieri at a United Nations Security Council briefing on Haiti on 26 September.  I visited Haiti several months ago.

“I go to school on foot. It’s a 45-minute walk from home,” says Florence. “I used to have to walk back for lunch. Sometimes, I would find that there was no food left at home. So I’d go back to school without having eaten.” Hunger is an issue for the people of Burundi’s Gitega province.