37th CFS Plenary Session, 17-22 October 2011, Rome
The CFS is the United Nations' forum for reviewing policies concerning world food. It is the most inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all relevant stakeholders to work together to ensure food security and nutrition.
Please visit our About section.
21 September 2010 – Some 330,000 Guatemalans will need food aid over the coming months, just to be able to subsist, according to a new United Nations study.
“It is a challenge for the country and the international community that we must confront,” UN World Food Programme (WFP) representative Willem van Milink said yesterday of the small Central American nation, which has recently been swept by torrential rains, floods, deadly landslides and a volcanic eruption.
8 September 2010 – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing rations to more than 100,000 Guatemalans who need emergency assistance after recent torrential rains in the Central American country brought deadly landslides and floods.
Corn, beans, vegetable oil and a corn-soya blend are among the items in the food rations being handed out, according to a press statement issued by the agency yesterday in the capital, Guatemala City.
The whole of the country has been affected by overflowing rivers and saturated soils since the heavy rain began, with many communities still struggling to recover from the impact of Tropical Storm Agatha or the eruption of the Pacaya volcano earlier this year.
Press Release No. 10/319
August 27, 2010 - A staff team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Guatemala during August 17-26, 2010 to conduct the fourth and final review of the Stand-By Arrangement approved in April 2009 (see Press Release No. 09/142). The mission met with Minister of Finance Edgar Balsells; Central Bank Governor María Antonieta de Bonilla; Superintendent of Banks Edgar Barquín; other senior government officials, and representatives of the private sector.
At the end of the visit Mr. Alejandro Lopez-Mejía, the IMF mission chief for Guatemala, made the following statement:
en español
Roma, 31 de agosto de 2010 – Los campesinos afectados por la tormenta Agatha que destrozó caminos, cultivos y cosechas vitales para la supervivencia de la población del departamento del Quiché recibieron un nuevo respiro a través de un apoyo de US$300,000 aprobado el 23 de agosto por el Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA).
5 August 2010 – The head of the United Nations rural development arm, Kanayo F. Nwanze, today began an official visit to Guatemala to talk with the Central American country’s leaders today about ways of alleviating poverty and tackling environmental challenges.
Kanayo F. Nwanze, the President of the UN International Fund Agricultural Development Fund (IFAD), will meet with President Álvaro Colom Caballeros and representatives from the IFAD-funded Rural Development Program for Las Verapaces (PRODEVER) to review progress of the programme’s poverty-reduction and market-access projects.
He will also tour the Guatemalan countryside to visit IFAD co-financed projects in the departments of El Quiché and Las Verapaces.
11 June 2010 – United Nations aid agencies and their partners in Guatemala today appealed for nearly $14.5 million to provide relief to survivors of Agatha, the first tropical storm of this year’s Pacific hurricane season, which brought with it the heaviest rains in the Central American country in nearly 60 years.
Tropical Storm Agatha killed at least 200 people and injured hundreds more, while many people are still reported missing and almost 100,000 others are living in shelters, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.
Press Release No. 10/184
May 6, 2010 - A staff team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Guatemala during April 27-May 6, 2010 to conduct the third review of the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) approved in April 2009 (see Press Release No. 09/142). The mission met with Minister of Finance Juan Alberto Fuentes Knight; Central Bank Governor María Antonieta de Bonilla; Superintendent of Banks Edgar Barquín; members of the Cabinet and Congress of the Republic, and representatives of the private sector.
At the end of the visit Mr. Alejandro Lopez-Mejía, the IMF mission chief for Guatemala, made the following statement:
9 April 2010 – More than a month after the United Nations and its aid partners appealed for $34 million to respond to the food crisis in Guatemala, less than 10 per cent of that amount has been received, prompting UN officials to express concern today over the plight of the estimated 680,000 people in need.
Guatemala has been hit by a prolonged drought, one of the worst in the country in three decades, resulting in severe food shortages that have exacerbated the country’s chronic malnutrition problem, Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters in Geneva.
An estimated 43 per cent of Guatemalan children below the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition, one of the worst rates in the world.
5 March 2010 – The United Nations, together with the Guatemalan Government and aid partners, today launched a $34 million appeal to counter food shortages affecting 2.7 million people living in the Central American country’s so-called ‘dry corridor,’ which even before last year’s drought had one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world.
18 September 2009 – Some 2.5 million Guatemalans have been affected by the worst drought to hit the Central American country in 30 years, with hundreds of thousands, including many pregnant women and children, facing severe hunger, the United Nations reported today.
UN agencies are currently assessing health, nutrition, food and livelihood needs in the country, where President Álvaro Colom last week appealed to international donors for aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update on the crisis.
The spike in food prices of last year (2008) underscored what experts have been telling us for many years: the world's food systems are in crisis