Tag Archives: malnutrition

October 22, 2011 · 3:05 am

The Investment We Need to Make in Afghanistan

WFP's Food for Training Program in Afghanistan provides rations for street children at Aschiana Foundation Centers. Funding is needed by WFP and Aschiana to ensure these programs can be maintained and expanded to reach impoverished children. (photo courtesy WFP/Assadullah Azhari)

In my article Food and Hope for Street Children in Afghanistan, I talked about a promising collaboration between the UN World Food Programme and the Aschiana Foundation; the idea being food for Afghan children can give them an opportunity to get the education and the training they need to have a future. It’s the one chance Afghanistan has.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has provided photos of this initiative. It’s a life changer for street children, who live in poverty and are forced to beg just to get basics. With rations provided to them by WFP, they can concentrate on tutoring and training provided at Aschiana Foundation Centers. It’s a safety net for the street children and their families.

Many an ill of a society can be fixed if children get the right nutrition and education. It’s vital we remember this now, when many people want to turn away from Afghanistan.

A massive drought has struck parts of Afghanistan this year. Food shortages exist in many provinces. Food prices are high. Malnutrition is likely to get worse. The UN World Food Programme is facing a huge funding shortage despite the recent 40 million dollar donation by USAID. The international community needs to come together and invest in fighting hunger in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan drought crisis comes at the exact time Congress is proposing reducing international food aid, one of the most inexpensive foreign policy initiatives. Reducing Food for Peace and other hunger fighting programs will harm Afghanistan and other countries where development and peace are on the line.

Support for the World Food Programme, Aschiana Foundation, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Oxfam and others is vital at this stage. There should be no withdrawal of humanitarian aid from Afghanistan.

Article first published as The Investment We Need to Make in Afghanistan on Blogcritics.

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Filed under global hunger

Tagged as Afghanistan, Aschiana Foundation, Drought, education, malnutrition, World Food Programme

October 9, 2011 · 10:16 pm

Over 1 Million in Yemen Denied Emergency Food Rations

Aisha is an internally displaced Yemeni girl in Southern Yemen living in an elementary school. She is one of many Yemeni children who are suffering from hunger and displacement. WFP and other aid agencies need support in order to carry out child feeding and rehabilitation programs. (WFP/Abeer Etefa)

Over one million Yemenis did not receive emergency food rations in September because of low funding for the UN World Food Programme (WFP). The UN food agency depends on voluntary donations from the international community.

As food prices have risen dramatically in 2011, impoverished families have been pushed deeper into hunger. Reports have shown families resorting to skipping meals.

In late 2010 WFP drew up a plan to distribute emergency food rations to around 1.8 million Yemenis who were struggling to afford basics like bread. The idea was a safety net for vulnerable families to prevent malnutrition and disease from gaining strength.

Back in February, I wrote a letter in the New York Times urging acceptance and funding of the plan by the U.S. and international community. As 2011 evolved into a year of protests, instability, and skyrocketing prices, this food aid took on even more urgency.

However, funding has been so limited that seven food-insecure governorates (around 700,000 people) were not able to receive any distributions this year. The cuts deepened as 500,000 more Yemenis were left off the most recent round of food distributions in September.

About 1.2 million Yemenis who should have been receiving food rations from WFP last month did not. But this has been the reality of food assistance programs for Yemen. They have been underfunded as the hunger crisis continues to deepen.

In addition, WFP’s Food for Education program for children has only had two distributions in the last two years. Both of them have been limited and able to reach only part of the intended recipients.

This initiative gives children food rations to take home from school. It’s a great plan for eliminating hunger and keeping kids in class. However, this year’s WFP Food for Education distribution reached only 59,000 of 115,000 planned beneficiaries. The ration size also shrank from two items to one. A program that should be expanded to reach hundreds of thousands of additional children has been getting by on relative scraps for years now.

UNICEF also is suffering from severe funding shortages as they try to help Yemen tackle the crushing child malnutrition crisis. I have reported on these funding shortages on numerous occasions as children lacking in nutrition are at risk of lasting physical and mental damage. It’s clear that no favorable outcome for Yemen will come about unless child nutrition is made a priority.

Anthony Lake, UNICEF’s director, said this week, “Malnutrition rates were alarmingly high in the country even before the current violence broke out, and its impact on the poorest people has only been compounded by rising food prices and collapsing basic health services. Of 3.6 million children under five years of age in Yemen, at least 43 per cent are underweight and 58 per cent are stunted.”

Imagine if a generation of Yemenis were not malnourished. They could solve many of their societal and governmental problems on their own.

What if we gave them that chance? We could do that almost right away with a full supply of plumpy’nut to knock out all existing cases of child malnutrition. A food for education system would do wonders because school feeding promotes nutrition and learning.

If we take action on these fronts, Yemen has a chance for a prosperous and peaceful future. The alternative is to continue to ignore the cries of hunger, and children stunted in growth and mind. That road, we know, is full of peril for all.

Article first published as Over 1 Million in Yemen Denied Emergency Food Rations on Blogcritics.

Food for Peace, Brazil and the World Food Prize

One of this year’s World Food Prize winners is H.E. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former President of Brazil. His work fighting hunger included developing the national school feeding program. An excerpt from the World Food Prize web site reads:

“The national School Feeding Program has had a far-reaching impact on reducing child malnutrition by providing nutritious meals to children in all grades of Brazil’s public schools across the country. Forty-seven million were being served in 2010, with a minimum of 30 percent of the food supplied from local farms. Child malnutrition fell 61.9 percent between 2003 and 2009, and all age groups experienced improved access to quality food.”

Brazil has come a a long way in its fight against hunger and developing its school feeding. Back in the 1960s Brazil got help from the U.S. Food for Peace program. Here is a photo of a milk shipment leaving for Brazil. George McGovern, a World Food Prize winner himself, is to the far right.

1962 Photo of the largest milk donation under the “Food for Peace” program leaving from Brooklyn, NY heading toward Brazil. Left to right is the Brazilian ambassador Roberto de Oliveira Campos; Capt. Timothy Harrington and George McGovern, the Food for Peace director. The milk will be used for maternal feeding and the school lunch program. (Library of Congress)

Today, Brazil supports school milk programs such as the one in Haiti. See my article Got Milk? Haiti’s Farmers and Now Schools Do.