The UN Â鶹ÊÓƵ is distributing urgently needed food assistance to families displaced by recent clashes in southern Syria¡¯s Sweida province while also continuing to provide a broad range of assistance across the country, including to Syrians returning home after a decade of conflict.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ began airdropping emergency food assistance to thousands of families in South Sudan¡¯s Upper Nile State, where surging conflict since March has forced families from their homes and pushed some communities to the brink of famine and an estimated 50,000 asylum seekers across the border into Ethiopia.
Today Â鶹ÊÓƵ warned that millions of Sudanese refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries risk plunging deeper into hunger and malnutrition as critical funding shortages force drastic cuts to life saving food assistance.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ reports that food and nutrition distributions for over 220,000 people have started in Tawila, North Darfur ¨C where hundreds of thousands are seeking refuge from horrific violence in and around El Fasher and Zamzam IDP Camp. The upcoming rainy season and funding shortfalls could threaten recent progress in turning the tide of famine ¨C at a time when Â鶹ÊÓƵ urgently needs to be scaling up to pre-stock food before roads become flooded and impassable, and ahead of the lean season when hunger is expected to surge.
The UN Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) has rapidly mobilized additional assistance in Burundi to support the large influx of families fleeing violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which has placed a significant strain on Â鶹ÊÓƵ food assistance.
Three convoys are heading to critical hunger hotspots ¨C famine-hit Zamzam camp (North Darfur) and Kadugli (South Kordofan). These shipments mark the beginning of what is expected to be the largest food aid operation since start of the conflict.
Escalating violence has led to mass displacements within Lebanon, requiring Â鶹ÊÓƵ to scale up its emergency food assistance to reach up to one million
people. Â鶹ÊÓƵ was well prepared and is already providing hot meals, ready-to-eat rations, food parcels and cash assistance daily to nearly 160,000 people in shelters.
Sudan¡¯s war has set off the world¡¯s largest hunger crisis, as the fighting continues to devastate lives and livelihoods. More than half the population (26 million) is now facing crisis levels of hunger ¨C and around 755,000 people face catastrophic conditions, with hunger-related deaths already being recorded. One in every two Sudanese is struggling to put enough food on their plates every single day.
The United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) has managed to bring desperately needed food and nutrition supplies into Darfur, the first Â鶹ÊÓƵ assistance to reach the war-wracked region in months. Yet, the UN food agency warns that unless the people of Sudan receive a constant flow of aid via all possible humanitarian corridors the country¡¯s hunger catastrophe will only worsen.
DRC¡¯s conflict-driven hunger crisis is worsening as violence in the eastern province¡¯s surges, forcing families to flee once again. More and more people are arriving at overcrowded camps where there is a lack of food, sanitation and shelter.
At least 25 million people are struggling with soaring rates of hunger and malnutrition as the crisis in Sudan sends shockwaves around the region, the United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) warns today, with thousands of families being displaced and forced across borders into Chad and South Sudan each week.
Climate change continues to wreak havoc in Eastern Africa, a region with minimal emissions yet which bears the brunt of the global climate emergency. Five consecutive failed rainy seasons from 2020 to 2022 resulted in a devasting drought that pushed millions into food insecurity and malnutrition as livelihoods were destroyed at a massive scale ¨C damage that will take families and communities many years to recover.
Thousands of Afghans living in Pakistan are crossing back into Afghanistan after the Government of Pakistan¡¯s announcement that all undocumented Afghans must leave the country by 1 November. Â鶹ÊÓƵ is providing emergency food assistance at border crossings with plans to assist more than a million vulnerable returnees in the coming months.
Chad is host to more than one million refugees - one of the largest and fastest-growing refugee populations in Africa. The recent conflict in neighbouring Sudan has driven hundreds of thousands more across the border. Despite humanitarian needs spiralling, resources available to respond are dwindling leaving aid groups with few options.
A hunger emergency is looming on the border between South Sudan and Sudan as families fleeing fighting in Sudan continue to cross the border every day. New data gathered by Â鶹ÊÓƵ shows that among the nearly 300,000 people who have arrived in South Sudan in the last five months, one in five children are malnourished and 90 percent of families say they are going multiple days without eating.
The Â鶹ÊÓƵ is rapidly scaling up its response on the Chad-Sudan border to support a surge of people fleeing from Sudan. Thousands of people are crossing each day from Sudan¡¯s Darfur region into the small border town of Adr¨¦ in Chad, with many arriving injured and with harrowing stories of the violence they have escaped.
The United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) has delivered emergency food assistance to more than one million people in Sudan in the six weeks since operations resumed on 3 May. Â鶹ÊÓƵ briefly paused operations when the conflict broke out but has since rapidly scaled up food distributions, delivering life-saving assistance to people in 14 of 18 States as fighting continues and the humanitarian situation deteriorates.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ is rapidly scaling up its emergency operations in Sudan, every day reaching thousands more people whose lives have been upended by the ongoing fighting. Â鶹ÊÓƵ is ramping up to assist 4.9 million vulnerable people in Sudan and thousands more who have fled to neighbouring countries.
Thousands of people have crossed into South Sudan as they flee ongoing conflict in Sudan. Â鶹ÊÓƵ is on the ground and supporting the new arrivals, but this additional response is putting pressure on an already severely underfunded operation.
Chad is witnessing a new wave of refugees crossing the border following the military clashes that erupted in neigbouring Sudan on 15 April. The humanitarian needs are growing in Chad and food needs to be urgently pre-positioned before the rainy season makes access impossible.
Desperately needed rains across the Horn of Africa have so far failed to materialize, almost a month into the current rainy season, and if these conditions continue, along with stagnant and even decreasing humanitarian aid, the number of hungry people due to drought could spiral from the currently estimated 14 million to 20 million through 2022
One month into the conflict in Ukraine, the United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) is providing emergency food assistance to one million people in the country and has built systems able to deliver food at scale to communities in need. Trucks, trains and mini vans are today delivering food supplies to the most vulnerable people across the country and more convoys are expected in coming days.
As the emergency operation in Ukraine moved into high gear today, the United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) expressed deep concern about the waning ability of families in embattled areas to find food and also warned that the crisis could have consequences well beyond Ukraine¡¯s borders.
Yemen is spiraling into a catastrophe as humanitarian funding dries up, forcing the United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) to scale back food assistance to millions of hungry families, Â鶹ÊÓƵ Executive Director David Beasley warned today, as he ended a two-day visit to the conflict-ravaged country.
The UN Â鶹ÊÓƵ warns that without urgent funding, one of the world¡¯s fastest-growing displacement crises in northern Mozambique risks becoming a hunger emergency as families continue to flee insurgent violence. The displacement has left at least 730,000 people in Cabo Delgado with no access to their lands and no means of earning a living. According to the latest food security data captured before the attacks in Palma town in late March 2021, nearly 228,000 people are highly food insecure. This number is projected to increase to 363,000 during the lean season beginning in October. Children are worst affected. Recent IPC data shows 75,000 children under the age of five are suffering from acute malnutrition. The situation is projected to continue deteriorating, with more districts likely to move into the 'Critical' levels of malnutrition.
