Somalia’s “dire hunger emergency” is spiraling upward with one-third of the population expected to face crisis or worse levels of food needs, but the U.N. has been forced to drastically cut food assistance because of a lack of funding, the head of the World Food Program said Thursday.
Cindy McCain told the U.N. Security Council the latest food security data show that over 6.6 million Somalis desperately need assistance including 40,000 “fighting for survival in famine-like conditions.”
But she said WFP was forced to cut monthly food assistance, which had reached a record 4.7 million people in December, to just 3 million people at the end of April – “and without an immediate cash injection, we’ll have to cut our distribution lists again in July to just 1.8 million per month.”
