The United Nations’s new top adviser on food blamed two decades of wrong-headed policies by world powers for the food crisis sweeping the globe in a stinging interview published on his first day in office. Frenchman Olivier de Schutter told <i>Le Monde</i> newspaper the world needed to prepare for the end of "cheap food".
North Korea again runs the risk of outright famine, ten years after up to one million of its people died of starvation, a leading United States research institute said on Wednesday. ”The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago,” said Peterson Institute senior fellow Marcus Noland.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged on Tuesday to set up a task force to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is threatening to spread social unrest. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged urgent action on Tuesday to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is hurting developing countries. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home, warning that could only make the problem worse.
Rising food prices have developed into a global crisis, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday. Concerns about food security mounted this week as rice prices hit records in Asia, and the United States warned that staples for the world’s hungry were getting much more expensive.
A ”silent tsunami” unleashed by costlier food threatens 100-million people, the United Nations said on Tuesday, but views differed as to how to stop it. The Asian Development Bank said there was enough food to go round, and the key was to help the poor afford it. It said Asian governments that have curbed food exports were overreacting.
The United Nations agency charged with relieving world hunger on Friday made an appeal for $256-million more in funds to cope with sharp rises in food prices. The World Food Programme request came on top of another "extraordinary emergency appeal" of $500-million made by the agency in March to top up its 2008 budget.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday it will cut food rations by half for up to three million people in Darfur starting next month because attacks on its trucks have reduced stocks. The agency said 60 WFP-contracted trucks have been hijacked in the western Sudanese province since the start of the year.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
African governments are nervously confronting a mounting wave of often deadly social unrest caused by the soaring cost of food and fuel. Forty people died during price riots in Cameroon in February. There also have been deadly troubles in Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritania and other violent demonstrations in Senegal and Burkina Faso — where a nationwide strike against price rises is to start on Tuesday.
French authorities were working on Saturday to free a luxury cruise yacht and its 30-member crew taken hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia. ”The defence and foreign affairs ministries are working to act as quickly as possible. I hope … to try to obtain the release of the hostages,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
Food prices are soaring, a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers can’t keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it is already boiling over. Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports.
Somalis uprooted by fighting in Mogadishu looted trucks carrying United Nations food aid on Friday, peacekeepers said, highlighting what relief agencies warn is a fast deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe. Somalia now has one million internal refugees, aid workers say, and their numbers are swelled by an exodus of about 20 000 civilians each month.
Food rationing will shortly be imposed on millions in desperate need unless donor countries make good a -million shortfall, the United Nations agency that combats starvation warned on Monday. Soaring fuel and grain prices have forced the World Food Programme to send out an ”extraordinary emergency appeal”.
The road from Harar runs for more than 960km east towards the border with Somalia, penetrating deep into the desiccated badlands of the Ogaden desert, the dusty heart of Ethiopia’s war-torn Somali regional state. This is the land that the self-styled separatists of the Ogaden National Liberation Front claim as their own.
The Nampula provincial government in Mozambique will need at least -million to reconstruct infrastructure in five districts destroyed by Cyclone Jokwe, Francisco Mucanheira, the provincial permanent secretary, told Radio Mozambique in a report broadcast on Saturday.
The Mozambican government has made an urgent appeal to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to help more than 60 000 people left destitute when Cyclone Jokwe hit northern and central parts of the country. The WFP said in a statement it would begin distributing food to needy communities early next week.
Escalating banditry has forced the World Food Programme (WFP) to halve food deliveries in Darfur, and without immediate cash the United Nations agency will ground its humanitarian flights at the end of the month. So far his year, hijackers have attacked five WFP passenger vehicles and 45 WFP-contracted trucks, the agency said in a statement.
United States actress Drew Barrymore donated -million of her own money on Monday to the World Food Programme (WFP) that the United Nations agency said would be used to feed thousands of schoolchildren in Kenya. Barrymore (33) a WFP ambassador against hunger, announced her pledge on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
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/ 21 February 2008
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged the Sudanese government and all rebel groups to agree to a ceasefire in Darfur, saying deteriorating security is undermining efforts to help thousands of civilians caught in an upsurge in fighting.
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/ 11 February 2008
Chadian rebels fled south on Sunday pursued by government forces, the military said, as the United Nations refugee agency warned that recent fighting in the country had put aid agencies in danger. Although a calm returned to the capital Ndjamena a week after a bloody assault on the city which left more than 160 people dead, the rebel forces said they were heading south.
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/ 30 January 2008
People in drought-affected regions of central and southern Somalia need urgent help after losing most of their livestock, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information, Ahmed Abdisalam, said on Wednesday. He said the worst-affected regions are Hiiraan, Galgadud, Mudug and parts of Bay and Bakol and Gedo.
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/ 29 January 2008
After rain comes sunshine — if you’re willing to seize the chance of a new life. Mozambique is trying to convince tens of thousands of people in low-lying areas who fall victim each year to floods during the summer rainy season to permanently resettle on higher ground.
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/ 25 January 2008
The realisation of promises by the government of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe of a record crop yield during this summer’s farming season will not be met, the country’s agriculture minister admitted on Friday. In October, the government declared that the summer would result in ”the mother of all agricultural seasons”.
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/ 24 January 2008
Southern Africa must improve its warning systems in order to minimise the impact of the flooding that has displaced tens of thousands of people in the region since December, a senior official has warned. Tomaz Salomao, executive secretary of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, was speaking after a tour of flood-hit districts.
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/ 23 January 2008
Zambia has mobilised its army to clear drainage systems in major cities amid fears torrential rains and flooding may lead to outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases, a government official said on Wednesday. Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi have been lashed by heavy rains for several weeks.
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/ 22 January 2008
The United Nations World Food Programme has begun flying in food and shelter to thousands of victims of heavy flooding in Mozambique, the agency said on Tuesday. More than two tonnes of mosquito nets, tents and plastic sheeting were flown in by helicopter on Monday to the Mutarara region, while the first deliveries of food were expected to be made on Tuesday.
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/ 19 January 2008
Thousands of people in Mozambique were still trapped in their homes by rising flood waters on Friday as heavy rains continued to pound Southern Africa, heightening fears of a particularly severe flood season. In Zambia, a Care worker said water levels in the south were twice as high as the same time last year.
African Union chief John Kufuor met Kenyan leaders on Wednesday to try to break a political deadlock following disputed presidential polls that sparked widespread violence and left at least 600 dead. President Mwai Kibaki, whose re-election 11 days ago triggered the unrest, denied there was any national crisis in his meeting with Kufuor.
African Union chief John Kufuor was due in Nairobi on Tuesday on a crucial mission to broker talks between Kenya’s rival leaders and end the political turmoil that has claimed hundreds of lives. Ahead of Kufuor’s arrival, President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga jousted with various proposals that would allow the two men to sit down together.
Kenya opposition leader Raila Odinga said on Monday he had called off protests because a "mediation process" to resolve the political crisis that has killed nearly 500 people was about to begin. "We are now assured that the mediation process is about to start," Odinga told reporters after meeting United States envoy Jendayi Frazer.
Kenyans across the political divide prayed for peace on Sunday while aid workers sought to bring relief to nearly 200 000 refugees from post-election violence. ”Our leaders have failed us. They have brought this catastrophe upon us. So now we are turning to the Almighty to save Kenya,” said Jane Riungu, leading her five children to a hilltop church.