Up to 345 million people marching UN warns toward starvation

by Sara Floyd Hello

The U.N. food chief on Thursday warned that the world is facing “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude” toward starvation with up to 345 million people marching and to starvation by the war in Ukraine 70 million pushed closer.

David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. The World Food Program said that in 2020 the U.N. Security Council in the 82 countries 345 million people facing acute food insecurity where the agency operates is 2½ times the number of acutely food insecure people before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

He said from very acute malnutrition and are “knocking on famine’s door”, it is incredibly troubling that 50 million of those people are suffering in 45 countries.

He said, pointing to rising conflict, the pandemic’s economic ripple effects, climate change, rising fuel prices and the war in Ukraine, “What was a wave of hunger is now a tsunami of hunger”.

On Feb. 24, Beasley said, since Russia invaded its neighbour, soaring food, fuel and fertilizer costs have driven 70 million people closer to starvation.

To be shipped in July he said despite the agreement allowing Ukrainian grain from three Black Sea ports that had been blockaded by Russia and continuing efforts to get Russian fertilizer back to global markets, “there is a real and dangerous risk of multiple famines this year” “The current food price crisis could develop into a food availability crisis if we don’t act”, and in 2023.

On conflict-induced food insecurity and the risk of famine in Ethiopia the Security Council was focusing, north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. About the food crisis in Somalia, which they both recently visited, Griffiths also put Afghanistan high on the list but Beasley and U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths also warned.

Griffiths said, and “it won’t be the only place either be sure and “In Somalia famine will happen.”

“Hundreds of thousands of people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger,” He cited recent assessments that identified which means that they are at the worst “famine” level.

In April 2020, Beasley recalled his warning to the council “that we were then facing famine, starvation of biblical proportions.” He said then the world “stepped up with funding and tremendous response, and we averted catastrophe.”

“All hands on deck with every fibre of our bodies we are on the edge, he said once again, even worse, and we must do all that we can”. “We must not let them down and the hungry people of the world are counting on us.”

Griffiths said the widespread and increasing food insecurity is a result of the direct and indirect impact of conflict and violence that kills and injures civilians, for income and food forces families to flee the land they depend on, and leads to economic decline and rising prices for food that they can’t afford.

“Some 19 million people six out of 10 are acutely food insecure, an estimated 160,000 people are facing catastrophe, and 538,000 children are severely malnourished”, he said after more than seven years of war In Yemen.

Beasley said in Yemen Ukraine war is stoking inflation, which is 90% reliant on food imports.

To provide aid to about 18 million people the World Food Program hopes, but its costs have risen 30% this year to $2.6 billion. He said, it has been forced to cut back, so Yemenis this month are getting only two-thirds of their previous rations, as a result.

From Sudan Beasley said South Sudan faces “its highest rate of acute hunger since its independence in 2011”. Over 60% of the population, he said 7.7 million people, are “facing critical or worse levels of food insecurity.”

Without a political solution to escalating violence he warned and substantial spending on aid programs, “many people in South Sudan will die”.

Griffiths said more than 13 million people need life-saving food in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions. In Tigray in June he pointed to a survey that found 89% of people food insecure, “more than half of them severely so.”

A truce enabled WFP and its partners to reach almost 5 million people in the Tigray area, in March Beasley said about resumed fighting in recent weeks “threatens to push many hungry, exhausted families over the edge.”

In the U.N. projects, including 588,000 who faced emergency levels between June and August, Griffiths said that in northeast Nigeria, 4.1 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity.

Almost half of those people couldn’t be reached, he said because of insecurity, and “some people may already be at the level of catastrophe and already dying” the UN fears.

To “leave no stone unturned”, to end these conflicts Griffiths urged the Security Council and to step up financing for humanitarian operations, “well below half of the required funding” saying U.N. appeals in those four countries are all.

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