Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Coronavirus, conflict and cuts to UN funding are increasing the risks of food insecurity and acute malnutrition in 2021
The government has promised £47m in extra emergency aid for 2021 as it becomes clear that the coming year will see a dramatic rise in people struggling for food.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Wednesday it will provide more aid for food, water, hygiene and shelter in 11 countries, including £8m to Africa’s Sahel region, where the UN has warned of catastrophic hunger.
UN agencies say millions at risk if aid can’t reach areas of country stricken by floods, violence and Covid-19
Parts of South Sudan are facing a “catastrophic” conflict-fuelled famine, humanitarian groups warned on Friday.
Three UN agencies have called for a halt to violence to allow urgent access to parts of Jonglei state, where they said people have already run out of food because of insecurity, flooding and the coronavirus pandemic.
Urgent alert issued over millions struggling with ‘catastophic levels’ of hunger as less than half of required aid received
The window to prevent the return of famine to Yemen is rapidly closing, UN agencies have warned, with a new assessment showing millions could head further into hunger in the coming months.
The alert came as a World Health Organization food security assessment showed thousands of people are slipping into famine – a number that is predicted to triple in the first half of next year – while millions more have seen declining access to food.
Organisation says money pledged is ‘not enough’ and warns of potential for huge number of child deaths
The UN has earmarked $100m (£75m) in emergency funding for seven countries deemed at risk of famine, warning that without immediate action the world could see “huge numbers of children dying on TV screens”.
The climate crisis, Covid-19, conflict and economic decline have created an “acute and grave crisis” in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, where millions of people are facing emergency levels of food insecurity, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Guardian.
Food security crisis means acute malnutrition among under-fives at highest levels since war engulfed the country
Almost 100,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying in Yemen as the country slides back into a hunger crisis.
An analysis by UN agencies says the coronavirus pandemic, economic problems and conflict have led to the highest levels of malnutrition ever recorded in parts of the country.
Millions face devastating hunger if relief efforts are not stepped up in a country ravaged by war, locusts and now Covid-19
Yemen is in danger of an imminent return to devastating levels of hunger and food insecurity, according to new analysis released by UN agencies.
The World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Unicef say that the percentage of the population predicted to face acute food insecurity in southern areas of the country will rise from 25% to 40% by the end of the year.
Millions of people are being pushed towards hunger by the coronavirus pandemic, which could end up killing more people through lack of food than from the illness itself, Oxfam has warned.
Closed borders, curfews and travel restrictions have disrupted food supplies and incomes in already fragile countries, forcing an extra million people closer to famine in Afghanistan and heightening the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where two-thirds already live in hunger.
The world is facing widespread famine “of biblical proportions” because of the coronavirus pandemic, the chief of the UN’s food relief agency has warned, with a short time to act before hundreds of millions starve.
More than 30 countries in the developing world could experience widespread famine, and in 10 of those countries there are already more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation, said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme.
Coronavirus ‘potentially catastrophic’ for nations already suffering food insecurity caused by famine, migration and unemployment
The warning from the World Food Programme (WFP) that an extra 265 million people could be pushed into acute food insecurity by Covid-19, almost doubling last year’s total, is based on a complex combination of factors.
WFP’s latest warning underlines the increasing concern among experts in the field that for many the biggest impact will not be the disease, but the hunger hanging off its coat tails.
Vulnerable parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa, are at risk of sliding into famine as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while humanitarian relief efforts are being hindered by lockdowns and travel restrictions, according to the UN.
Experts raised the spectre of unrest similar to that seen in 2007-08 when food price rises sparked riots around the world, destabilising fragile states and fuelling conflict in ways that are still being felt. They told the Guardian that the world could still avoid such a crisis, but time was running out.
Outbreak in east Africa has already devastated crops across a swath of Kenya and Somalia
Massive swarms of locusts sweeping across much of east Africa have reached Uganda and Tanzania, the United Nations has said, threatening millions more people with hunger in an already fragile region.
Questions over relief effort multiply as it emerges aid officials knew for months of armed groups diverting food
The theft of food aid in Yemen by Houthi rebels might be only the tip of the iceberg, officials believe, as questions multiply over international relief efforts in the famine-ravaged country.
It has emerged that aid officials have been aware for months that armed groups – most prominently Houthi rebels in the capital, Sana’a – have been diverting food aid into the key areas they control, including by manipulating data in malnutrition surveys used by the UN.
In other parts of the globe, like the Republic of Yemen, lethal forces are stalking victims whom Americans cannot always picture in complicated political scenarios we may not quickly grasp. So the average American blinks, and in that blink opportunists make deals with undemocratic, unprincipled bullies.
The Saudi-led coalition launched heavy air strikes on Yemen's main port city of Hodeidah on Friday, in an apparent resumption of military operations on the city after the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement attacked two Saudi oil tankers, residents said. The coalition on July 1 halted an attack on the Houthi-held city to aid UN efforts at a political solution that would avert an all-out assault on the Red Sea port, which the United Nations fears could trigger a famine throughout the country.
Our sense of fear, perhaps more than any other factor, explains why evangelicals voted in such large numbers for Donald Trump in 2016 and continue to support his presidency. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson once wrote, "Fear is not a Christian habit of mind."
Yemen is being destroyed by war, and America is complicit. The United States has no boots on the ground, but our military is providing arms and logistical support to the Saudi-led military coalition battling Houthi rebels for control of Yemen.
It's amazing what unprincipled people will admit to when goaded. A petition has been posted on the parliamentary website calling on prime minister Theresa May to withdraw her invitation to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, to visit the UK.
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Some eighty per cent of the deaths occurred in Ukraine, and Applebaum draws on new archival research to show that food scarcity was not simply a tragic consequence of misguided state planning but, rather, a state-orchestrated program "specifically targeted at Ukraine and Ukrainians." The Soviet leadership, driven by "paranoia about the counter-revolutionary potential of Ukraine," ordered the confiscation of food from homes and imposed severe restrictions on travel and trade, while also carrying out a purge of scholars, writers, artists, and others.
On Wednesday October 4, the news carried an apocalyptic version of our country with its chaotic national and foreign policy politics; its epidemic of Americans massacred by fellow Americans fatally attracted to assault weapons; and climate change denial in the face of a trifecta of record-breaking hurricanes. Our world is closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1960s.