The Global Food Security Update offers decision makers an overview of trends in household food security in countries where WFP is present. This issue reports on changes observed at the regional and country level over the last semester and provides an outlook into the third quarter of 2012. Information is drawn from WFP’s regional and country-based Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) units and secondary sources.

In focus

• Several areas of the Sahel are critically food insecure due to drought and conflict. Vulnerable groups are facing an acute food access crisis due to very high prices. Humanitarian needs are likely to peak in the upcoming lean season from June to September. As of May 2012, some 355,000 people were displaced due to conflict in Mali.

• Provision of humanitarian assistance coupled with adequate short rains have considerably eased the food security conditions in the Greater Horn of Africa, yet significant needs still persist. Long rains in 2012 have been erratic, causing dryness in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

• Conflict-induced economic and trade disruptions continue to drive food insecurity in South Sudan, where the number of food insecure has risen from 3.7 million to 4.5 million. Food security conditions are worst in the states bordering Sudan.

• Recent fighting and subsequent displacements are likely to affect food security conditions in eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

• Protracted conflict is sharply increasing food insecurity in Yemen, where the prevalence of severe food insecurity has risen from 12 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2011.

• Flooding has seriously affected the livelihood of smallholder farmers in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru.

• Crop development in parts of southern Africa could be potentially affected due to dry weather.

• The weather forecast calls for normal to above normal rains in the Sahel and much of Asia from June through September. Central and eastern Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea are likely to face below average precipitation. Rainfall deficits are also likely in Colombia and Central America. The June-November Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be slightly less active than average.