Famine is over in war-torn Somalia but the problems are not: Haweyo Ibrahim survives on meagre food aid handouts rather than return to her village, controlled by Shebab rebels who killed her husband.

‘Until the Shebab leave, I cannot go back,’ 40-year old Ibrahim said, queuing for food aid handouts in the anarchic Somali capital Mogadishu.

‘I cannot go back to where they murdered my husband,’ she added quietly.

Conflict, population displacement and high food prices mean millions of people in South Sudan face hunger this year, two U.N. food agencies said on Wednesday.

The number of people with insecure food supplies has risen to 4.7 million in 2012 from 3.3 million in 2011, a report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) said.

Of those, about one million people are severely food insecure, and that number could double if fighting continues and prices keep rising, the report said.

World Food Programme (WFP) is facing a critical shortfall of $109 million for floods operation in Sindh and Balochistan, WFP spokesman Amjad Jamal told APP on Friday.

“WFP has only supplies to continue distributions in flood-hit areas until the end of November, leaving no option but to cut the ration numbers of beneficiaries from December,” he added.

South Korea and the United States are adamant that there will be no food relief for crisis-hit North Korea until it guarantees that all aid will reach the most needy and there is an improvement in ties between the two Koreas.

China, the only ally of the secretive Stalinist state, has also been non-committal on how much food it is providing.

Aid agencies have said food shortages are worsening in the isolated state and a third of children under 5 are malnourished.

Food commodity prices are likely to stay high and volatile during the next few years because of rising demand, more frequent extreme weather and the biofuel industry, according to a report from the UN’s agriculture agencies.

Rising food prices and increasing volatility have become a big political and economic problem, especially in developing countries.

The jump in prices for grain and other staples led to riots during the 2007-08 food crisis and more recently central banks in Asia have tightened monetary policy to combat food inflation.

In response to appeals by Pakistan to international community for humanitarian relief assistance for victims of recent floods in the country, Government of Brazil will distribute up to 710,000 tons of food items. It comprises 500,000 tons rice, 100,000 tons brown beans, 100,000 tons maize, 10,000 tons dried full milk with total cost estimated in Pak Rupee 36 billion (US$412 million),a Brazil Embassy press release said Thursday.

The United Nations Agencies have estimated that 2.5 million people are in desperate need of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities in the flood hit areas.

Talking to APP on Saturday, an official of Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Humaira Mehboob said that food is needed for 2.75 million people, while 2.96 million people are in urgent need of medical care.

She said at least 1.75 million people require emergency shelter in flood affected area.

The international donors have so far pledged $127.44 million for providing food, shelter, medicine and other facilities to the flood hit people of Sindh, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Dr Zafar Iqbal Qadir said on Thursday. Talking to APP, he said that out of the pledged amount various countries have already given $14 million to the NDMA for providing basic amenities to the marooned people. So far a total of 280,136 tents and 1.738 million food packs have been provided to flood hit people of Sindh, he said.