UN to supply food to Venezuela children amid crisis
The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) has reached a affect the govt of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela to supply food to the country's schoolchildren.
Child malnutrition has been on the increase as Venezuela's once-prosperous economy has gone into freefall and health services have collapsed.
More than 5.3m Venezuelans have fled their home country amid the crisis.
The WFP aims to succeed in 185,000 school children by the top of this year.
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What's the situation like?
A study by the planet Food Programme published in 2020 suggested that one in three Venezuelans wasn't ready to put enough food on the table to satisfy minimum nutrition requirements and was "in need of assistance".
Families live mainly on cereals, roots and tubers, to which they add pulses, like beans and lentils, the study - which was supported a nationwide survey of quite 8,000 Venezuelans - suggests.
A 2020 WFP report placed Venezuela among the highest four countries worldwide affected by food insecurity.
How did it get that bad?
Venezuela, an oil-rich country, has been governed for quite 20 years by the socialist PSUV party.
From 1999 to his death in 2013, Hugo Chávez was president. When he first became president, he promised to drive down Venezuela's huge levels of inequality.
While he managed to scale back inequality during his time in power, a number of the socialist polices he brought in backfired.
Price controls, which were aimed toward making basic goods cheaper to the poor, ruined many Venezuelan businesses because they not made a profit. With many businesses ceasing halting production, shortages of basic goods and food spread.
The economic situation has worsened severely since Hugo Chávez died and his chief assistant , Nicolás Maduro, became president in 2016.
Rampant hyperinflation has made the local currency, the bolivar, almost worthless. A cup of coffee with milk sets you back some 4.2m bolivars and lots of businesses now only accept US dollars.
And while more goods are now available again as traders set prices in dollars, they need again become largely unaffordable to the poor or those without access to the US currency.
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