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by RIJASOLO Agence France-Presse Nothing to eat, nothing to plant. The last rain in Ifotaka fell in May, for two hours. Across Madagascar’s vast southern tip, drought has transformed fields into dust bowls. More than one million people face famine. Across tens of thousands of acres, the countryside is desolate. Harvest season begins in October, leaving long, lean weeks before the meagre crops come in. Some villages are abandoned. In others, people should be working […]
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — Persistent drought in southern Madagascar has left hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine and stoked acute malnutrition among children, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned Thursday. Ministry of Health data revealed that 16.5 percent of children under five now suffer from acute malnutrition, almost double the proportion four months ago, the agency said. The Ambovombe district in the Indian Ocean island’s far south has […]
JOHANNESBURG, Madagascar (AFP) — Over 4,000 children have been hospitalized for malnutrition in southern Madagascar this year due to severe drought, Action Against Hunger said Thursday, as food insecurity spirals in the most vulnerable parts of the country. The Indian Ocean island nation is grappling with the effects of three consequence years of below-average rainfall compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the impact is felt in the impoverished Grand Sud region, where the majority […]
By Kaneez Fatima, with Ashraf Khan in Karachi LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) –Chickens in Pakistan have been feasting on captured locusts under an initiative to combat swarms of the insects that are threatening food supplies in the impoverished country. Prime Minister Imran Khan has endorsed plans to expand a pilot project in the bread-basket province of Punjab, where villagers earned cash to gather locusts that were then dried out, shredded and added into poultry feed. Farmers […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — South Korea approved $8 million in humanitarian aid for the impoverished North on Wednesday, authorities said, with negotiations over Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal deadlocked and inter-Korean relations at a standstill. It will be the first such aid Seoul has provided Pyongyang since 2015 and follows the North’s lowest recorded harvest for a decade, according to the United Nations. The donation — to be made through the UN — comes as […]
More than 113 million people across 53 countries experienced “acute hunger” last year because of wars and climate disasters, with Africa the worst-hit region, the UN said Tuesday. Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and Syria were among the eight nations accounting for two-thirds of the total number of people worldwide exposed to the risk of famine, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in its 2019 global report on food crises. Launched three […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea has acknowledged “drawbacks” in its agricultural sector this year, echoing UN reports of declining crop yields in a country that remains heavily reliant on food imports and aid. Agricultural production is chronically poor in the North, which has periodically been hit by famine, with hundreds of thousands dying — some estimates say millions — in the mid-1990s. Premier of the government cabinet, Pak Pong Ju, referred to “drawbacks […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — More than five million children are at risk of famine in Yemen as the ongoing war causes food and fuel prices to soar across the country, charity Save the Children warned Wednesday. Disruption to supplies coming through the embattled Red Sea port of Hodeida could “cause starvation on an unprecedented scale,” the British based NGO said in a new report. Save the Children said an extra one million children now […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — The United Nations on Tuesday warned that more than 400,000 children in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are severely malnourished and could die within months without emergency intervention. The crisis — the latest to hit the poverty-stricken, strife-torn central African country — is unfolding in the vast region of Kasai, the UN’s children fund Unicef said. An 18-month-long combination of violence, mass displacement and slumping agricultural output are having a […]
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — Yemen is facing a mass famine that will affect millions of lives unless the Saudi-led coalition ends its blockade and allows aid deliveries into the country, the UN aid chief warned Wednesday. Mark Lowcock, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said that unless the borders are re-opened to aid shipments, “it will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims.” The UN official spoke […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Somalia, hit by drought and on the verge of famine, will count 1.4 million acutely malnourished children by the end of the year, up 50 percent from late 2016, the United Nations said Tuesday. The UN children’s agency warned that 275,000 of those children were expected to be so severely malnourished that they could easily die. Severe acute malnutrition is the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition, with victims often appearing […]
by Tristan MCCONNELL Agence France-Presse NAIROBI, Kenya – South Sudan’s famine is a disaster created by its leaders, say analysts who argue that while food may save some lives now it is only peace that can bring lasting relief. But peace is as distant as ever with an international community that appears paralysed, while the men ruling over the country’s misery are unmoved by pleas for them to lay down their weapons. There is no […]
