Famine

Somalia has declared a state of emergency due to the invasion of locusts in the Horn of Africa, France's press reported, citing a statement by the Somali Ministry of Agriculture.

Locusts destroy crops in one of the poorest and most vulnerable regions of the world.

Somalia is the first country in the region to declare an emergency over the infestation.

A record 45 million people are at risk of a food crisis over the next six months in southern Africa, the BTA warned today. The reason for this is the severe drought that has hit part of South Africa, as well as the adverse effects of natural disasters such as the Idai cyclone that devastated Mozambique earlier this year.

Unwelcome though it is to say this, the one factor keeping some people in Kosovo is their inability legally to get out of it, and go somewhere else.

This is not to defend the EU's go-slow approach to giving Kosovo visa-free status.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme said on Tuesday that it delivered food and food vouchers to more than 9.5 million hungry people in Yemen in December, just shy of its 10 million monthly target due to insecurity in the country threatened by famine, reports Reuters. 

Peace talks between the Yemeni government and rebels, aimed at ending four years of war that has pushed 14 million people to the brink of famine, were due to open Thursday in Sweden.

AFP - More than five million children are threatened by famine in war-torn Yemen as prices soar, a charity said Wednesday, warning an entire generation may face death and "starvation on an unprecedented scale".

More than 11 million children in war-torn Yemen are in desperate need of humanitarian aid, warns UN children's fund.

The Saudi-led coalition’s easing of its blockade on famine-threatened Yemen is “a step in the right direction” but does not go far enough, the European Union and United Nations said.

The U.N. World Food Programme is cutting food rations by 30 percent for more than 400,000 refugees living in camps in Kenya due to insufficient funding, it said on Monday, quoted by Reuters. 

Dadaab and Kakuma camps in Kenya are primarily home to refugees from neighboring Somalia and South Sudan, both ravaged by wars that have forced millions of people to flee.

For the first time in six years, there is famine in the world: a real, United Nations-declared famine, with more than 30 percent of the affected population suffering acute malnutrition and more than a thousand people dying of hunger each day. And there are three more countries where famine may be declared any day now.