It was late afternoon and the young mother was hiding in the kitchen of her banana-thatch shack, lighting a cooking fire she hoped her neighbors would not see — she gets food aid while they must scrounge to eat.
The 5-year-old teetered on broomstick legs — he weighed less than 20 pounds, even after days of drinking enriched milk. Nearby, a 4-year-old girl hung from a strap attached to a scale, her wide eyes lifeless, her emaciated arms dangling weakly.
Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday that the global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me," by treating food crops "like color TVs" instead of as a vital commodity for the world's poor.
The European Union on Friday proposed a $1.6 billion two-year emergency fund to help poor countries cope with the global food crisis.
Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan and other members of Nelson Mandela's global crisis task force turned their attention to world hunger on Wednesday, focusing on soaring food prices.
World leaders at a U.N. summit embraced an ambitious strategy to combat a food crisis that is causing violent riots and threatening to push up to a billion people across the globe into hunger.
For presidents and premiers at summits, delicacies washed down by fine wines are all part of the agenda.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose authoritarian rule has brought widespread hunger to his country, defended his policy of seizing land from whites on Tuesday, saying he is undoing a legacy of Zimbabwe's former colonial masters.
The World Bank said Thursday it was speeding up its aid to help an international effort to overcome the global food crisis by providing an extra $1.2 billion in grants and loans.
The World Bank is stepping up efforts to help overcome the global food crisis by providing an extra $1.2 billion in grants and loans.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged rich countries on Tuesday to end agricultural subsidies, and said he will press for a global trade agreement to help the world's poorest farmers escape poverty.
A five-year farm bill in Congress this week does little to address the growing global food crisis. Instead, it diverts money that could be spent feeding poor children abroad to give more subsidies for U.S. farmers now enjoying record high crop prices and incomes.
Liberia banned all food exports Monday, saying profiteers have been taking advantage of its cheap rice prices to truck the grain — already in short supply in Liberia — to neighboring countries to sell at higher prices.
Science has provided the souped-up seeds to feed the world, through biotechnology and old-fashioned crossbreeding. Now the problem is the dirt they're planted in.
Nigeria on Wednesday announced it was suspending import duties and other taxes on rice while launching a raft of other measures to head off a food crisis in Africa's most populous nation.
The Asian Development Bank announced emergency funding Saturday to help poor countries struggling with rice prices that have nearly tripled in four months.
Hungry Afghans looking for their next meal eye bread scraps piled up like heaps of trash at a Kabul market as a vendor weighs out fistfuls of the stale crusts on a scale. A Pashtun woman waits with an empty plastic sack.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he is moving "at full speed" pushing efforts to tackle the world food crisis.
Ration cards. Genetically modified crops. The end of pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap supermarkets.