It¡¯s vital that at this time of global crisis Â鶹ÊÓƵ maintain its food assistance programmes which offer a lifeline to 87 million vulnerable people around the world. Â鶹ÊÓƵ¡¯s top priority is to ensure it has the resources in place to meet the food and nutrition needs of the people that so depend on its assistance.
The pandemic is affecting countries in different ways. On behalf of the international community, Â鶹ÊÓƵ is providing real-time tracking of changes in the areas of food security, health access and markets in vulnerable countries. Monitoring will be complemented with early warning and security analysis of how the pandemic is impacting food and other vulnerabilities.
With COVID-19 containment measures limiting people¡¯s movement, Â鶹ÊÓƵ has introduced measures to ensure that beneficiaries receive their entitlements in as safe a way as possible.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ¡¯s school feeding programme has been suspended after all schools closed due to COVID-19 and this affects more than 1 million children.
As COVID-19 cases in Syria are officially confirmed, nearly 8 million people are food insecure and already extremely vulnerable. After nine years of conflict, Syrians will need our support more than ever to stay healthy .
More than 939,000 people have been displaced by escalating conflict in northwest Syria since December 2019. They now live in over-crowded camps where an outbreak of COVID-19 could have devastating impact consequences.
A wave of desert locusts in East Africa is now forming more swarms in parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, putting at risk the main crop harvest in May and June, and threatening the food security of smallholder farmers.
In South Sudan, desert locusts have affected four counties in Eastern Equatoria region since arriving in mid-February.
The March-April start of the long rains, coinciding with regeneration of rangeland and planting, enables the new wave of locusts to breed and spread.
It will be vastly more cost-effective to support the prevention and control efforts of Governments and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to tackle locusts now than to help people after their crops had been ruined.
The volatile security situation in Idlib has rapidly displaced nearly one million people who are also contending with harsh winter weather conditions. Families are in urgent need of life-saving humanitarian assistance as the amount of safe space for civilians across the northwest is shrinking by the day. Food prices in Idlib have risen by 120 percent.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ appeals to all parties to the conflict to end the fighting in Idlib and to allow people access to humanitarian assistance. A ceasefire is urgently needed to allow humanitarians to save lives.
Hunger continues to persist in South Sudan and is widely expected to worsen in the coming months if assistance is not scaled up. This is mainly due to the longer-term effects of the conflict which has also forced tens of thousands of families to remain in temporary shelters and millions of people to seek refuge outside the country.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ renews its call for sustained peace and urges parties to the revitalized peace process to maintain peace. If peace holds, the country has a realistic chance of bringing communities together, end years of isolation and inequity as well as eliminating hunger in the country.
