Before the coronavirus crisis, 135 million suffered from acute hunger worldwide, Corinne Fleischer, the WFP’s regional director, told Reuters. The numbers have climbed since and are expected to soar further because of climate change and conflict.

The impact of environmental challenges is another destabilizing factor that can drive food scarcity and lead to conflict and mass migration happening.

“The world just can’t afford this,” Fleischer said. “We see now 10 times more displacement worldwide because of climate change and conflict and of course they are inter-linked. So we are really worried about the compounding effect of COVID, climate change and the war in Ukraine,” she said.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the impact of the Ukraine crisis has had massive repercussions, she said, underlining both the import dependency of the region and its proximity to the Black Sea.

“Yemen imports 90 per cent of its food needs. And they took about 30 per cent from the Black Sea,” she said.

The WFP supports 13 million of the 16 million people who are in need of food assistance, but its assistance only covers half a person’s daily needs because of a lack of funds.

Costs had gone up 45 per cent on average since COVID and Western donors have faced massive economic challenges with the war in Ukraine.

For oil-exporting countries such as Iraq, which benefited from the surge in oil prices following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, food security is at risk.

Iraq needs about 5.2 million tons of wheat but only produced 2.3 million tons of wheat, Fleischer said. The rest had to be imported, which cost more.

Despite state support, severe drought and recurring water crises are endangering the livelihood of smallholders all over Iraq, she said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Amina Ismail and Charlotte Bruneau.

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“There’s a perfect storm coming because of several years of drought, conflict, economic deterioration, compounded by COVID,” David Beasley told Reuters in Doha. “The number of people marching towards starvation has spiked to now 14 million.”

The WFP is warning of a human catastrophe looming in Afghanistan if the United Nations agency is not able to raise US$200 million by September.

Afghanistan is facing economic collapse after foreign countries and institutions said they would withhold aid and monetary reserves after Islamist Taliban insurgents took control of the capital Kabul on Aug. 15.

Beasley said the international community faced some very difficult decisions, warning it would be “hell on earth” for the people of Afghanistan if the economic situation deteriorated.

“The people of Afghanistan need aid now,” he said, adding that the amount of people needing the WFP’s help could double if the international community “turns their back” on Afghans.

“The politics needs to be worked out as soon as possible.”

Beasley said he was very worried about whether the agency would raise the money needed and that it hoped Qatar, other Gulf Arab states and the United States would contribute.

Without the $200 million, he said, the WFP would start to run out of food for Afghanistan next month and four million lives would be at risk if food aid could not be pre-positioned for them before winter.

Beasley also said the Taliban had provided assurances to the WFP to allow its aid to continue to reach people unimpeded.

“They have thus far been co-operative. They have allowed us independence, neutrality and impartiality,” he said, adding that the Taliban were not taxing vehicles carrying aid supplies.

— Reporting for Reuters by Alexander Cornwell in Doha and Emma Thomasson in Geneva.

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The WFP’s first take-home rations were distributed for children under six years old at some 277 schools and preschools, as well as school staff, in 25 municipalities in northwestern Falcon state, WFP said in a statement.

Since Venezuela’s schools are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, parents or teachers picked up the monthly rations — which consist of six kilograms of rice, four kg of lentils, 454 grams of salt and one litre of vegetable oil — on their behalf, according to Susana Rico, the WFP’s Venezuela representative.

“We are reaching these vulnerable children at a critical stage of their lives when their brains and bodies need nutritious food to develop to their full potential,” Rico was quoted as saying in the statement.

Activists had been clamouring for years for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to allow the WFP to distribute food in the country, which contains the world’s largest crude reserves by some measures, as a drop in crude prices and gaping fiscal deficits led to hyperinflation and recession.

Maduro and the WFP reached a deal in April, in what was seen by some analysts and western diplomats as a concession by the government aimed at getting U.S. sanctions on its oil industry lifted.

More than five million Venezuelans have emigrated, according to the United Nations, while some 60 per cent of households live in poverty, according to the Encovi survey by researchers at Andres Bello Catholic University. Some seven million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations.

WFP aims to feed some 185,000 children by the end of the year, 850,000 by July 2022 and 1.5 million by 2023.

— Reporting for Reuters by Vivian Sequera.

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The proposal was one of two related to the pandemic that failed to make headway at a three-day meeting of the Geneva-based trade body, an outcome its spokesman described as “disappointing” in a difficult year for the institution.

The 164-member WTO, currently leaderless and with no functioning appeals body for trade disputes, is facing the biggest crisis in its 25-year history.

U.S. Ambassador Dennis Shea, in his final major address to the organization this week, described “wide divergences among the membership” and said the WTO had underperformed.

However, critics blame the Trump administration for its difficulties, saying Washington has hamstrung the WTO by blocking the appointment of a new director-general and opposing judge appointments to its top court.

Close to 100 countries voiced support for the food aid proposal, originally submitted by Singapore, which envisaged a ban on export restrictions on food intended for the World Food Program (WFP).

The U.N. agency, which won a Nobel Peace Prize this year for its work combating global hunger, has warned that 2021 will be “catastrophic” with famines possible due partly to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said WTO members, who must decide by consensus, could not agree. Some countries appeared to have concerns the proposal might impinge on their own domestic food security, he added, saying India was among them.

WFP’s Tomson Phiri said that a ban would have been a “shot in the arm” for his organization, describing how blockages had delayed rice deliveries to West Africa earlier this year.

The other proposal on which WTO members could not agree was a waiver on IP rights for COVID medicines, Rockwell told reporters, confirming the outcome of a meeting last week.

The appointment of a new WTO director-general was also raised at Friday’s meeting and there was still no consensus.

“I think what the last three days have shown us very clearly is that we need a DG,” Rockwell said.

— Emma Farge is a Reuters correspondent covering the United Nations and related matters in Geneva.

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The WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for its efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict, said it had so far raised US$1.6 billion.

“We’ve got a lot more money to raise to make certain we avert famine,” David Beasley, executive director of the WFP, said at a conference organized by the U.N,’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Beaseley noted seven million people had died from hunger this year as the COVID-19 pandemic, which could double hunger worldwide, claimed a further one million lives.

“If we don’t sort out COVID, (the) hunger death rate could be three, four, five times that,” said Beaseley.

The Rome-based WFP says it helps some 97 million people in about 88 countries each year, and that one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat.

After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise again since 2016, driven by the twin scourges of conflict and climate change.

“If you think about the wealth on Earth today we shouldn’t see one single child (go) hungry or die from starvation,” said Beaseley.

The WFP has dispatched medical cargoes to over 120 countries during the pandemic, and provided passenger services to ferry humanitarian workers where commercial flights were unavailable.

The agency, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, is funded entirely by donations. It provides school meals to 17.3 million children globally and delivered 4.2 million tonnes of food to regions or countries in need in 2019.

— Reporting for Reuters by Maytaal Angel.

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The Houthis control most towns and cities including the capital Sanaa, from where they ousted Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government in 2014. A Saudi-led coalition intervened against the Houthis in 2015 with the aim of restoring his government.

After hearing that humanitarian food was being sold on the open market in Sanaa, WFP said it found many people had not received the food rations to which they are entitled, and that at least one local partner organization affiliated with the Houthi ministry of education was committing fraud.

“This conduct amounts to the stealing of food from the mouths of hungry people,” WFP executive director David Beasley said. “At a time when children are dying in Yemen because they haven’t enough food to eat, that is an outrage. This criminal behaviour must stop immediately.”

Houthi officials contacted by Reuters did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yemen’s war and the ensuing economic collapse have left 15.9 million people, 53 per cent of the population, facing “severe acute food insecurity” and famine was a danger if immediate action was not taken, a survey said this month.

WFP is trying to get food aid to as many as 12 million severely hungry people.

It said its monitors had gathered photographic and other evidence of trucks illicitly removing food from designated food distribution centres and local officials falsifying records and manipulating the selection of beneficiaries.

“It was discovered that some food relief is being given to people not entitled to it and some is being sold for gain in the markets of the capital,” the WFP statement said.

Beasley said he was asking the Houthi authorities to stop food being diverted and make sure it reaches the people who need it.

Herve Verhoosel, WFP spokesman in Geneva, said WFP was looking at the possibility of distributing cash to needy people, if a biometric identification system could be introduced, using personal data including iris scans and finger prints.

He said Beasley had written to the Houthi leadership about the WFP findings several days ago.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Miles.

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Beasley will replace another American, Etharin Cousin, who has been the WFP executive director since 2012. Washington was the top contributor to WFP in 2016 with US$2 billion, a third of the agency’s budget.

Trump has proposed an unspecified cut in funding for the United Nations and its agencies. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, like Beasley, is also a former governor of South Carolina.

“Mr. Beasley has a wealth of experience that would greatly benefit WFP, the United Nations and the international community at large,” Guterres wrote in a letter, seen by Reuters, notifying the WFP executive board of the appointment.

Guterres said Beasley, who served as South Carolina governor from 1995 to 1999, was among 23 applications/nominations for the job. The WFP executive board noted his appointment in a letter to Guterres on Tuesday.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols.

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Many farmers have had to abandon their land, unable to afford the soaring cost of seeds, fertilizers and tractor fuel, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme said.

Wheat output — vital for making flat loaves of bread which are a staple of the Syrian diet — dropped from an average 3.4 million tonnes harvested before the war began in 2011 to 1.5 million this year, they said in a joint report.

“There is an estimated shortfall of about 838,000 tonnes in the country’s national wheat requirement of 3.854 million tonnes taking into account commercial imports,” it said.

The area planted for cereals in the 2015-16 cropping season is the “smallest ever,” they added. Field visits and surveys showed higher than average production of barley, which some farmers switched to as the rain-fed crop is more resistant than wheat, and “large patches of cropland affected by drought.”

“Food production in Syria has hit a record low due to fighting and insecurity but also bad weather conditions,” World Food Programme spokeswoman Bettina Luescher told a news briefing.

Food shortages are particularly worrying in east Aleppo, the rebel-held part of the city besieged by government forces where the U.N. says 250,000-275,000 civilians still live.

“The last food rations provided by the U.N. have been given out (in east Aleppo). It is very hard to say how people will be coping there. Of course it is a very different situation than in the capital where food is readily available at the markets,” Luescher said.

Reuters reported last month that Syria’s state grain buying agency Hoboob struck a deal to purchase one million tonnes of wheat from political ally Russia, covering the needs of government-controlled areas for a year.

Before the war, Syria was an exporter of livestock. “Now herds and flocks have shrunk significantly, there are 30 per cent fewer cattle, 40 per cent fewer sheep and goats and a staggering 60 per cent less poultry which of course is the most affordable source of animal protein,” Luescher said.

More than seven million people in Syria are classified as “food insecure”, meaning they are not always sure where their next meal is coming from, she said, adding: “Eighty per cent of the households across Syria struggle with a lack of food or lack of money to buy food.”

The World Food Programme is distributing rations to more than four million people in Syria each month.

— Stephanie Nebehay reports on the United Nations and humanitarian aid issues for Reuters from Geneva.

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