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UN World Food Program Struggles to Keep Up With Rising Costs, Increased Need
Rising food and fuel prices, a slumping dollar, a string of poor harvests, and a dramatic surge in the number of people in need around the globe have combined to create a "perfect storm" hitting the world's hungry, the Los Angeles Times reports.
As a result, the United
Nations World Food Program has seen both its
operating costs and the needs of poor people in developing
countries rise dramatically over the last year. Last month,
the organization issued
an emergency appeal for donations to cover a shortfall of
more than $500 million — a figure likely to increase. If the organization
is unable to cover the shortfall, say WFP officials, it may
have to reduce food
rations or eliminate them altogether in some countries.
The most vulnerable populations are found in countries like Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of individuals rely on humanitarian aid. But just as alarming, say WFP officials, are the emerging communities of newly needy. In places such as Afghanistan and Central America, many people who once ate three meals a day and could afford basic health care are no longer able to make ends meet. These newly poor individuals are more likely to live in urban areas and to buy most of their food in a market, where food costs have skyrocketed.
In Afghanistan, for example, the price of wheat has increased by more than two-thirds in the past year, while the overall cost of food in El Salvador has roughly doubled in the same period. Elsewhere, the price of unsubsidized bread in Egypt has increased ten-fold and the cost of rice recently doubled in a single week.
WFP assesses the vulnerability of people in 121 countries, based on criteria such as how much the country relies on imported food; how large the urban population and the current rate of inflation is; and what portion of their income families spend on food. At one end of the spectrum, families in Burundi spend 77 percent of their income on food, while the figure in the United States is closer to 10 percent. Approximately forty nations have been judged by WFP to be at risk of serious hunger or are already suffering from it. Short-term consequences of the spreading crisis, say officials, could include food riots and political unrest, while in the long term overall health and education levels in many countries are likely to decline.
Nicole Menage, head of WFP's food procurement service, said she receives daily, sometimes hourly, reports on rising prices and falling reserves. Menage likened the situation to a mammoth board game with multiple moving pieces, noting that "the only tool we have is to stretch the net as far as possible."
Sanders, Edmund. Wilkinson, Tracy.
Children rights news releases by United Nations The Children's Rights Division monitors human rights abuses against children around the world and works to end them. We investigate all kinds of human rights abuses against children: the use of children as soldiers; the worst forms of child labor; torture of children by police; police violence against street children; conditions in correctional institutions and orphanages; corporal punishment in schools; mistreatment of refugee and migrant children; trafficking of children for labor and prostitution; discrimination in education because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or HIV/AIDS; and physical and sexual violence against girls and boys. Children's physical and intellectual immaturity makes them particularly vulnerable to human rights violations. Their ill-treatment calls for special attention because, for the most part, children cannot speak for themselves, their opinions are seldom taken into account and they can only rarely form their own organizations to work for change.
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