#ipc-famine-declaration

#ipc-famine-declaration

"It's like a storm closing in on us, and every week brings a new cloud," said John Aylieff, WFP's country director in Afghanistan. "The latest big, dark cloud is the Iran crisis."

Women are responsible for collecting water in more than 70% of rural households that do not have access to mains water across the developing world. Women and girls collectively spend 250m hours a day collecting water globally. The climate crisis is exacerbating the problem, according to a new report from the UN.

From Minnesota to Mississippi we're lifting up our hard working farmers and ranchers and growers and we're putting more money in American pockets. We're going to prove that the golden age of American agriculture is right here and right now.

In Turkana, the land is rugged, roads disappear into dust, and villages are scattered across vast distances in a county of just more than a million people. Despite it being the rainy season, weather experts warn that Turkana and other arid regions may receive little relief. Authorities say drought is once again taking place, with 23 of Kenya's 47 counties affected.

With less money coming in, the 52-year-old Fofie in Ghana has taken the desperate step of giving part of his land to illegal sand miners, a lucrative practice driven by high construction demand since sand is used in concrete. The cost is severe, however: the sand mining makes the land infertile.

"famine thresholds for acute malnutrition have now been surpassed"

Since October's ceasefire, which meant Israel would allow some - but not nearly enough - aid trucks to enter our besieged Strip, people in Gaza have desperately been eating, whenever possible, what they had been deprived of previously. Yet, as a result, many have developed " refeeding syndrome," which is a serious medical condition. Refeeding syndrome occurs when food is suddenly reintroduced after a prolonged period of starvation - and Israel has subjected those of us in Gaza to such periods on multiple occasions.

Montaha Omer Mustafa, 18, was among many people who managed to get out of el-Fasher before the city's seizure by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, but only after paying for passage and going days on foot with little water, moving through villages and scrubland. As fighting closed in on the last big city held by the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in North Darfur state, tens of thousands of residents fled westwards, abandoning homes, possessions, and even family members.

"The Trump Administration has a zero-tolerance policy for waste, theft, and diversion of life-saving assistance," the department said.

The Sudan Doctors Network calls the attack in North Kordofan a blatant violation of international humanitarian law'. Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have launched a series of drone attacks targeting humanitarian aid convoys and fuel trucks across North Kordofan, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials and medical organisations said. The North Kordofan state government condemned Friday's strikes on a convoy linked to the World Food Programme (WFP), urging the international community and United Nations bodies to impose sanctions

Already, 2026 is proving to be a challenging year for global hunger. Last year, the global development sector faced enormous upheavals, with the United States and other donor countries slashing aid budgets even as low-income countries struggled with debt burdens. Steep aid cuts have exacerbated existing food security crises-whether from Russia's war with Ukraine disrupting international food supplies or farmers losing tens of billions of dollars due to climate change.

In 2025, the administration of US President Donald Trump ordered the US Agency for International Development to be closed; this year, it withdrew the country from 66 international organizations. Other Western nations that are plagued with high levels of debt and pressure to prioritize domestic challenges have slashed their foreign aid, too. According to projections, official development assistance dropped by 9-17% in 2025, amounting to some US$55 billion.

Now I have no work, I can't provide for my family, he told Al Jazeera, adding that he used to work in the infrastructure and farming sectors. I used to work with an axe to open water channels between the trees, plough the soil around them, spray pesticides, and plant tomatoes and cucumbers. I used to work from 7am to 4pm for 4050 shekels [$13-$15] per day.