Helping Tens Of Thousands Made Homeless By Mozambique Floods

WFP and the rest of the humanitarian community in Mozambique have mobilized to help the large numbers of people displaced by seasonal flooding in southern Mozambique. The needs are huge and - with ominous weather systems looming on the horizon - the struggle is far from over.

Top Photo: Joana Tembe lost her home to the floods. Here at Hokwe camp, she waits in line for food from WFP for herself and her family.

Bottom left Photo: Most of those in the camps for the flood-affected are women and children. Many of the menfolk from this part of Mozambique are working in the mines in South Africa

Bottom right Photo: This woman will divide the sack of WFP maize she carries among five households at Chihaquelane camp

Photos: WFP/Leonor Fernandez

Pakistan,  Sindh provice, September 2012



The United Nations World Food Programme has begun food distributions to tens of thousands of people affected by monsoon floods in Sindh province, with plans to gear up operations to reach the most severely affected areas of Balochistan. A one-month food ration is being distributed to some 10,000 families in Jacobabad district of Sindh, where some areas are under 2.5 meters (8 feet) of water, drawing upon limited available stocks of food. With road access limited due to the flood waters, WFP has deployed 16 motorboats to reach some of the worst affected communities. The WFP food basket consists of dietary staples of fortified wheat flour, pulses, vegetable oil and iodized salt, as well as High Energy Biscuits and specialized ready-to-use supplementary food for small children. 



Photos: WFP/Amjad Jamal


Paraguay: World Food Program Food Distribution to the Flood-Stricken area of El Chaco

Unusual torrential rains destroyed crops, affecting thousands of families, mostly indigenous and peasants in El Chaco, a semi-arid hot and low land region in Paraguay. The Government requested WFP’s assistance to bring in food relief.

Photo: WFP/Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri

A Paraguayan Air Force crew member helps a staf member of the National Emergency Secretariat (SEN) load a helicopter in Puerto Casado –700 kilometres from the capital city of Asunción—for an airlift of food to the communities of Machetevaina and Castilla.

Photo: WFP/Elio Rujano

Francisco Recalde and his family from the community of La Madrina have lost all their crops and rely on the World Food Programme to provide them with assistance. Francisco’s wife Dominga holds their 13-month-old daughter Daisy who was suffering from acute malnutrition and a respiratory infection but now has fully recovered. WFP recently visited the Recaldes in their relocated home. They received WFP’s food rations in early July and now they are slowly recovering. Francisco recently found a temporary job as laborer in a local hacienda. “We thank WFP for this food,” said Dominga. “Now we can eat two meals a day, lunch and dinner, before we could not.”

Like the Recaldes, many families in El Chaco have also received food rations. Some use the wheat flour to prepare tortillas as soon as they receive their monthly rations made up of beans, wheat flour, rice, vegetable oil and salt.

Photo: WFP/Julio Verdun

Food distributions were also carried out via the Paraguay River. This boat in Puerto Casado will reach three communities along the river with WFP food.

Photo: WFP/Elio Rujano

Mozambique, February 2012



Food distributions began on 2 February in the flood-hit central Zambezia province of Mozambique where nearly 6,000 people in Maganja district received rations of flour and other supplies to last them a month. Following a request for help from the Mozambique government, WFP is working to provide emergency food rations to 76,500 people in Zambezia and a further 6,500 in Maputo Province, around the country’s capital. Around 100,000 hectares of farmland are believed to have been lost in the poor southern African country. There are fears for food security in coming months, when inhabitants of affected areas will have no crops to harvest.



Photos: WFP/Naomi Scott

Have you ever driven by a truck on the highway and wondered what it was carrying?

If you had been driving next to trucks like these on the highways of Central America, the answer would be food for people like the little girl in the picture below.

She’s from a town called El Zapote in El Salvador where thousands of people, including her parents, lost everything they had in a wave of flash floods. The little poncho she’s wearing is just a plastic bag with a hole punched through it.

In her hand is a packet of high-energy biscuits brought to her by the trucks in the picture above. There are more trucks on their way with more food for her and her family that will help to sustain them as they rebuild their lives.

Photos by WFP/ Alfredo Arriaza & Vladimir Rivera