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At the request of the French government, currently chairing the G20, the Food and agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) held today an emergency meeting to mobilize international support

A group of global artists, activists and business leaders have signed a joint letter urging world leaders to step up their response to the famine in the Horn of Africa. They call on them to act “without reservation, prevarication or equivocation” when they meet at an emergency summit in Rome today.

The UN announcement of famine in Somalia is both a wake-up call to the scale of this disaster, and a wake-up call to the solutions needed to limit death-from-hunger now and in the future.

Several rich governments are guilty of wilful neglect as the aid effort to avert catastrophe in East Africa limps along due to an $800 million shortfall.

While the international community has stepped up to help those impacted by mega-emergencies, such as the earthquake in Haiti or the floods in Pakistan, unfortunately, “slow-onset” humanitarian crises, such as the worsening drought in the Horn in Africa, have not received the same attention.

Somalia is suffering its worst drought in years and failed rains are already devastating half a million lives, international aid agency Oxfam warned today. An ongoing conflict in the country together with the drought has pushed hundreds of thousands of Somalis beyond their ability to cope.

Negotiators should begin UN climate talks with far more urgency and resolve following a year of weather-related disasters, record temperatures, flooding and rising sea levels.

Floods and heavy rains across Niger have destroyed crops less than two months before harvest, compounding the country's existing food crisis. Flooding has killed at least six people, left thousands homeless, ruined crops and forced hungry families to crisis point.

Insufficient funding and delays in food delivery threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Sahel belt of West Africa. There is little excuse for the lack of adequate funding and delays – the international community had been warned of the magnitude of the unfolding crisis for months.

Ten leading aid agencies today called for a 'surge' in the humanitarian effort to help 10 million people at risk of acute hunger across the Sahel region of West and Central Africa.