FROM THE FIELD: The genocide survivor helping others avoid starvation |

7 January 2021

During the 1994 Genocide Against The Tutsi In Rwanda, Liberee Kayumba avoided starvation thanks to emergency rations from the World Food Programme (WFP). Today, she is helping to ensure that Burundian refugees in the country have enough to eat.

Liberee Kayumba recounts her harrowing experience during the genocide, during which her parents and brother were killed. She was just 12 years old.

The WFP rations she received were literally a life-saver. Now, the same organization is helping some 138,000 refugees fleeing conflict in neighbouring Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to stay alive.

Read more here about Ms. Kayumba, and the ways that WFP is helping some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

News Tracker: Past Stories on This Issue

David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, receives the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to WFP in 2020.

WFP chief uses Nobel speech as call for action to avert ‘hunger pandemic’

10 December 2020

Humanitarian Aid

With 270 million people – more than the entire population of Western Europe – “marching toward starvation”, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) called for greater action to avert a “hunger pandemic”, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the UN agency on Thursday.

An over-reliance on traditional activities such as farming has left all but a handful of least developed countries (LDCs) extremely vulnerable to the economic shock caused by COVID-19. Pictured here, a family farmer in Chad. (file photo)

Revealed: The cost of the pandemic on world's poorest countries

3 December 2020

Economic Development

More than 32 million of the world’s poorest people face being pulled back into extreme poverty because of COVID-19, leading UN economists said on Thursday, highlighting data showing that the pandemic is likely to cause the worst economic crisis in decades among least developed countries (LDCs).