For the World's Hungry, the Recession Is Far from Over

It’s late morning and Minara Khatoon’s five young children haven’t eaten yet. They sit huddled on the dirt floor of their mud thatch hut, waiting as their mother stokes a makeshift fire with straw and dry leaves to prepare what will be their main

Her husband doesn’t work due to a chronic asthma condition so to make ends meet she toils as a maid in wealthier households during the day and at night cobbles together handicrafts to sell in a local market. “This is how we survive,” says Minara, pounding fistfuls of wheat on an earthen plate, her tired face far older than that of a woman of her 30 years.

But she may soon have to find a way to do more. While many world leaders claim the worst has past, the fallout of the global financial crisis still hovers over Minara’s rural hamlet. In 2009, rich western governments have kept a tighter grip on their purse strings, leading to significant funding shortfalls for international organizations dependent on government contributions. The WFP, which currently targets 108 million people on the brink of starvation in 74 countries and is entirely funded through donation, has been one of the worst affected: At the beginning of the year, it tabled a 2009 budget of $6.7 billion. By September, it had received a little more than a third of what it solicited.

In a year when an estimated 100 million more people joined the ranks of the global hungry, pushing the total over a billion for the first time, the WFP is facing the prospect of scaling back operations and cutting off millions of people it has been providing for. “We’re looking at an unprecedented situation,” says Gregory Barrow, a WFP spokesman at the organization’s headquarters in Rome. “We’re having to make extremely difficult calculations that involve real people, real lives.”

Time