Airstrikes and armed clashes in northwest Syria have displaced over 800,000 people since December 2019 – 80% of whom are women and children. Many families were forced to flee on foot in the middle of winter, with temperatures at night reaching 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
Experts forecast that close to 4.8 million people in the Central Sahel will be at risk of food insecurity during the lean season (June-August 2020) if no appropriate actions are taken urgently.
A new report hammers home the need for billions of dollars in investment to keep hunger from deepening its tentacles further into vulnerable locations across the world.
The sheer scale and complexity of the challenges in Africa and other regions will stretch the resources and capacity of WFP and other agencies to the limit.
As a result of this year’s severe drought, economic downturn and Cyclone Idai, around 8 million people have been pushed into severe hunger in Zimbabwe.
The four walls (and no roof) that Osman and his family call home is a building formerly used as a toilet. It took them four days to clean out. But still, his family is comparatively lucky.
Shadia, age 15, was displaced from her home in south Idlib in Syria in early September and now lives in a camp in north Idlib.
WFP has achieved an unprecedented expansion of food assistance in Yemen, scaling it up by 50 percent. But still, over 11 million people continue to face a daily struggle of finding enough food.
WFP is in a race against time to mobilize vital funds to feed millions of people in South Sudan as hunger advances on a population in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The Mt. Lebanon famine killed 200,000 people between 1915 and 1918. The situation in Syria today looks eerily similar.
