War and conflict

Twenty million people risk dying of hunger in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and the north-east of Nigeria, including 1.4 million children suffering from severe malnutrition, the United Nations food relief agency said, spotlighting today its worldwide campaign to fight famine.

Nearly four out of five children in Yemen are now in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, leading humanitarian groups announced in a joint statement Wednesday. Executive directors from UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organization said the overwhelming majority of Yemen's children now face a "vicious combination" of indiscriminate famine and the world's worst cholera epidemic on record.

Calling for “immediate care and protection” for children caught up in violence in Iraq's war torn Mosul and other Middle East conflicts, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today warned that the lives and futures of some 27 million across the region and parts of Africa are at risk.

Less than a fifth of Americans are aware that extreme hunger threatens the lives of 20 million people in Africa and the Middle East, yet the overwhelming majority regard it as the most pressing global issue once they have been told, a poll of US voters has revealed.