Emergency food stocks maintained by countries around the world are at their lowest levels in 30 years, contributing to the surge in global food prices, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said Thursday according to DPA. The situation has put the WFP and relief organizations in a difficult situation to meet the needs of the world's most vulnerable populations, said WFP director Josette Sheeran from her Rome-based headquarters. WFP, which had an annual budget of 3.1 billion dollars, has urged donors to provide an additional 500 million dollars in 2008 so it can meet demands in poor countries, where the prohibitive cost of food has prompted riots and threatened people with starvation. "I call this a new phase of hunger because millions of people, who were not in the urgent category six months ago, have been pushed into that category, and we are seeing people, who are already vulnerable, who are now at great risk of malnutrition," she said. The people threatened with malnutrition including children and pregnant women. Sheeran cited the needs of Iraqi refugees, including those in Syria, as well as requests by Afghanistan, Haiti and Sudan's Darfur region. The Afghan government alone asked for 700 million dollars in food aid in 2008. The spikes in food prices in recent months have added 100 million people to the category of people living on less than 2 dollars a day around the world, which had been estimated at nearly 1 billion people.
