HARVEST PROSPECTS FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA PROMISING BUT LONG-TERM PROBLEMS PERSIST JOHANNESBURG – James T. Morris, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa, said on Thursday that southern Africa may be on the cusp of better harvests but the underlying causes of the region’s four-year crisis still remain and must be addressed.
UN LEADERS URGE NEW EFFORT TO END SUFFERING OF MILLIONS IN AFRICA’S GREAT LAKES REGION BUJUMBURA – The heads of three of the largest United Nations humanitarian agencies today urged the international community to match political progress in the Great Lakes region with a new commitment to end the suffering of the millions of people forgotten by the rest of the world.
HIGH ENERGY BISCUITS AIRLIFTED TO KENYA TO FEED 200,000 FLOOD VICTIMS NAIROBI – A Boeing 747 jumbo jet chartered by the United Nations World Food Programme landed today in Nairobi, delivering 94 metric tons of high energy biscuits from a depot in Brindisi, Italy, for hundreds of thousands of victims of Kenya’s largest floods in years.
3.5 MILLION AFGHANS FACE CRITICAL SHORTAGES OF FOOD AID KABUL – The United Nations World Food Programme today called on donors to provide urgently needed funds to its Afghanistan operation to ensure food assistance to 3.5 million hungry Afghans, warning that there will be a break in food supplies this month without fresh donations.
LIBYA MAKES FIRST DONATION TO WFP -- FOR MILLIONS AT RISK IN DARFUR, CHAD KHARTOUM – The United Nations World Food Programme today welcomed its first ever contribution from the Government of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
WFP’S DAUNTING TASK: FEEDING 1.7 MILLION REFUGEES IN 2006 GENEVA – As the media and the humanitarian community focus on the spreading drought in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations World Food Programme is deeply concerned that more attention is needed to highlight the persistent problems faced by the world’s refugees – most of them in Africa.