Four Congolese children who receive food in school thanks to WFP. The red cups they use to eat their nutritious porridge are the symbol of WFP's Fill the Cup campaign to feed hungry school children all over the world. Photo: WFP/Katherine HodgesonAs the number of hungry people shoots past record levels, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) called on the world to remember the more than one billion urgently hungry people with inadequate access to food. “World Food Day is actually ‘No Food Day’ for almost one out of every six people around the world this year,” said WFP executive director Josette Sheeran.
“Let’s remember that more than one billion people won’t get enough nutritious food to eat today. We can change this - so our challenge is to turn ‘No Food Day’ back into ‘World Food Day’ for the hundreds of millions without food on their table tonight.”
The flow of food aid is at its lowest level in twenty years, while the number of hungry people is growing, due to the combined impact of high food prices, the global financial crisis and increasingly severe weather patterns.
Reduction of rations
This year, WFP set out to feed 108 million people in 74 countries around the world, but a severe budget shortfall has prompted a reduction of rations to hungry people in some countries, and programme suspensions in others. So far, donors have contributed some USD2.9 billion towards WFP’s 2009 budget of USD6.7 billion.
Sheeran added that for decades, WFP has been able to feed around ten per cent of the world’s hungriest men, women and children, but this year, for the first time, the agency is unlikely to reach that target. As an agency that responds to emergency needs, WFP has also had to meet many unforeseen demands in 2009, such as the response to the recent floods in the Philippines.
