WFP Provides Food Assistance for 250 Thousand Yemenis

Arab World

September 27th, 7:00am

Aden - Mohammed Nasser

A Yemeni girl whose family received food aid through the United Nations provided by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (United Nations)

The United Nation World Food Program (WFP) announced plans to maximize support for Yemen, suspended earlier this year due to funding shortfalls, supported by a 30 million euros contribution from Germany. The WFP said in its Situation Report for August that it will resume work to complete 300 assets in 40 districts across nine Yemeni governorates, reaching 254,000 people through food assistance (FFA) projects. It also announced resuming its school feeding program and dispatched 1,200 metric tons (mt) of school feeding commodities in August. However, due to a lack of funding and commodity arrival delays, WFP will only be able to assist around 665,000 (one-third) of the planned 1.9 million school children over the current semester. According to the report, the inter-agency response continued during August, including through the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) and the UN Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), led by UNFPA with UNICEF and WFP as supply partners. By the end of August, the Rapid Response Mechanism had assisted 37,000 people with RRM kits, which include ready-to-eat food provided by the WFP, especially that 18 of the 22 governorates have been impacted by the heavy rains that caused widespread floods across the country, with Marib and Hajjah governorates most affected. The report revealed that 19 million people suffer from food insecurity in Yemen, while 161,000 people live in famine-like conditions, 3.5 million people are acutely malnourished and 3.1 million people were assisted by the WFP in August. The latest WFP food security data showed that the nationwide prevalence of inadequate food consumption increased in July for the third consecutive month, reaching the highest levels seen since February 2018. The report further said that under the terms of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a WFP- chartered bulk carrier departed Ukraine on August 30 with 37,000 mt of wheat grain bound for WFP’s GFA program in Yemen. The vessel is expected to arrive by mid-October. By the end of August, the International Organization for Migration Rapid Displacement Tracking reported 51,000 people displaced so far this year, with 20,600 displaced since the truce came into effect on April 2. The RRM, for its part, assisted 10,500 people in August, approximately a 35% decrease compared to the previous month, the report showed. The WFP also assisted 406,000 Yemeni children and mothers with nutrition assistance in Yemen in August under its Treatment of Moderate Acute Malnutrition program. It started the first round of cash assistance for nutrition support under its nutrition assistance program in the same month.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3897496/wfp-provides-food-assistance-250-thousand-yemenis