SOMALIA: “Highest levels of malnutrition in the world”. "Somalia has the highest levels of malnutrition in the world", with up to 300,000 children acutely malnourished annually, Hilde Frarfjord Johnson, UNICEF's deputy executive director, said. Anaemic mothers and inadequate nutrition were the main causes of high malnutrition levels in the war-torn country, she said, with most cases in south-central Somalia.
COTE D’IVOIRE: Poverty getting worse
Slightly under half of Cote d'Ivoire's 20 million people are now below the poverty threshold, living on less than about US$1.25 per day – up from 38.4 percent in 2000 and the highest in 20 years, according to results released by the national statistics institute (INS) on 27 November. The study surveyed 12,600 households to measure poverty and the conflict's impact on households, according to INS. "Poverty in Cote d'Ivoire is becoming increasingly worrying," Nouhoun Coulibaly, head of the INS, told reporters at the release of the results.
Global: Avoiding another food price bubble
In another 12 years, 16 million more children could be malnourished at a time when even fewer people will be able to afford staple cereals like maize, rice and wheat, which would cost between 13 percent and 27 percent more. This is the bleak scenario of a world in recessionary mode, with declining investment in food production, painted by a food policy think-tank.
Starvation rampant in Zimbabwe
A dramatic crop failure, coupled with a disastrous financial crisis spurred by an ongoing political stalemate, has led to widespread starvation in Zimbabwe. Many survive on nothing more than wild fruit. There are no official statistics.
AFGHANISTAN: Drought, poverty lead children to abandon school It is hard to estimate the number of children who have abandoned school to collect water and/or help feed their families, but local officials have reported a considerable drop in school attendance. “The number of students has gradually declined10-20 percent of the several hundred students have abandoned school because of drought,” said Enayatullah Sharaaf, head of Chemtal's education department. “The quality of attendance has also been affected because students do not have enough time and energy to do homework,” he said.
OPT: Consolidated appeal for 2009 focuses on food
Food aid accounts for over two thirds of the 2009 US$462 million requested by UN agencies and NGOs to fund humanitarian aid programmes in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt). "More than 50 percent of Gaza families are living below the poverty line and unemployment in Gaza has reached 42 percent, one of the highest rates in the world," said Deputy Commissioner-General for UNRWA (UN Palestinian refugee agency) Filippo Grandi.
NAMIBIA: New report reveals hidden poverty
A Namibian government report has revealed that three times as many people as previously thought are living in severe poverty. The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) found that nearly a third of Namibia's 1.8 million people lived on US$1 a day or less, but noted a sharp rise in households classified as “severely poor”, or living on less than N$185 (US$19) per month.
YEMEN: Food insecurity stalks Hadramaut Governorate
About 12 percent of children are acutely malnourished in Yemen, he said, adding that children were very often the last to get nutritious food: “In times of emergency, for UNICEF, children are the first. But the truth is this food distribution is focused on elderly people, and children get what is left by the parents or their older siblings.”The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it would be setting up a nutrition programme for children in flood-affected areas of Hadramaut. Naseem Ur-Rehman, chief communications and information officer.
GLOBAL: UN launches record appeal for humanitarian aid
The UN is asking for a record US$7 billion to help 30 million people in Africa and the Middle East. The fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country suffering from conflict for more than a decade, for which $831 million is being asked, and the ongoing plight of Sudan, where the UN and aid agencies need just over $2 billion, weighed heavy on the appeal, along with Somalia, needing $919 million. “More than 100,000 children are on the run in the Kivus, along with their families,” said Hilde Johnson, deputy head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), referring to the troubled region of the DRC.
BANGLADESH: Children and women suffer severe malnutrition
Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child and maternal malnutrition in the world, say health experts. According to the State of the World's Children (SOWC) Report 2008, issued by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), eight million or 48 percent of all children under-five are underweight.
