The World Food Programme (WFP) is an international organization within the United Nations that provides food assistance worldwide. It is the world's largest humanitarian organization and the leading provider of school meals. Founded in 1961, WFP is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 87 countries. In 2023 it supported over 152 million people, and it is present in more than 120 countries and territories.
In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which a person does not have the physical or financial capability to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that goes beyond the common desire for food that all humans experience, also known as an appetite. The most extreme form of hunger, when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food, leads to a declaration of famine.
The welfare state of the United Kingdom began to evolve in the 1900s and early 1910s, and comprises expenditures by the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland intended to improve health, education, employment and social security. The British system has been classified as a liberal welfare state system.
The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, commonly known as CAFOD, is an international development and relief charity. It is the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Islamic Relief Worldwide describes itself as "a faith-inspired humanitarian and development agency which is working to support and empower the world's most vulnerable people".
The British Red Cross Society is the United Kingdom body of the worldwide neutral and impartial humanitarian network the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The society was formed in 1870, and is a registered charity with more than 17,200 volunteers and 3,400 staff. At the heart of their work is providing help to people in crisis, both in the UK and overseas. The Red Cross is committed to helping people without discrimination, regardless of their ethnic origin, nationality, political beliefs or religion. Queen Elizabeth II was the patron of the society until her death in 2022, and was replaced by her successor King Charles III, who previously served as president between 2003 and 2024.
A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food directly with their food pantries.
Sufra is a community food and support hub based in Stonebridge ward in the London Borough of Brent.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Founded in 1943 by the Bishops of the United States, the agency provides assistance to 130 million people in more than 110 countries and territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Innocent Limited, trading as Innocent Drinks, is a British-based company that produces smoothies and juice sold in supermarkets, coffee shops and various other outlets. The company sells more than two million smoothies per week. Innocent is over 90% owned by The Coca-Cola Company.
Poverty in the United Kingdom is the condition experienced by the portion of the population of the United Kingdom that lacks adequate financial resources for a certain standard of living, as defined under the various measures of poverty.
Mary's Meals, formerly known as Scottish International Relief (SIR), is a registered charity which sets up school feeding programmes in some of the world's poorest communities, where hunger and poverty prevent children from gaining an education. It was founded in 2002 and has grown from its first feeding operation of 200 children in Malawi, to a worldwide campaign, providing free school meals in hundreds of schools and feeding more than two million children daily. Mary's Meals is named after Mary, the mother of Jesus, by its founders, who were inspired by their Catholic faith, although the charity is not a Catholic organisation.
FareShare is a charity network established in 1994 that aims to relieve food poverty and reduce food waste in the United Kingdom. It does this by obtaining good-quality surplus food from the food industry that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to frontline charities and community groups across the UK.
John Philip Glen is a British politician and former management consultant who served in the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2022 to 2023, and as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General from 2023 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Salisbury in Wiltshire since 2010.
Universal Credit is a United Kingdom based social security payment. It is means-tested and is replacing and combining six benefits, for working-age households with a low income: income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), and Income Support; Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Working Tax Credit (WTC); and Housing Benefit. An award of UC is made up of different elements, which become payable to the claimant if relevant criteria apply: a standard allowance for singles or couples, child elements and disabled child elements for children in the household, housing cost element, childcare costs element, as well as elements for being a carer or having an illness or disability and therefore having limited capability to work.
The United Kingdom government austerity programme was a fiscal policy that was adopted for a period in the early 21st century following the era of the Great Recession. Coalition and Conservative governments in office from 2010 to 2019 used the term, and it was applied again by many observers to describe Conservative Party policies from 2021 to 2024, during the cost of living crisis. With the exception of the short-lived Truss ministry, the governments in power over the second period did not formally re-adopt the term. The two austerity periods are separated by increased spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first period was one of the most extensive deficit reduction programmes seen in any advanced economy since the Second World War, with emphasis placed on shrinking the state, rather than consolidating fiscally as was more common elsewhere in Europe.
Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the 2007–2008 world food price crisis that began in late 2006 and especially since the Great Recession, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
Iain Duncan Smith served as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016. A member and previous leader of the Conservative Party, Duncan Smith was appointed to the cabinet by Prime Minister David Cameron following the 2010 general election and the formation of the coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. He was reappointed after the Conservatives won a majority in the 2015 general election but resigned in March 2016 in opposition to disability benefit cuts.
The Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) is the UK network of independent food aid providers. Its membership includes over 550 independent food banks as well as other types of food aid provider. A charity since October 2018, IFAN supports and advocates on behalf of its member food aid organisations, collates independent food bank data, and campaigns for changes that would end the need charitable food aid in the UK through what's called a 'cash first' approach to food insecurity.
Since late 2021, the prices for many essential goods in the United Kingdom began increasing faster than household incomes, resulting in a fall in real incomes. The phenomenon has been termed a cost-of-living crisis. This is caused in part by a rise in inflation in both the UK and the world in general, as well as the economic impact of issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Brexit. While all in the UK are affected by rising prices, it most substantially affects low-income persons. The British government has responded in various ways such as grants, tax rebates, and subsidies to electricity and gas suppliers.
