Refugees fleeing fighting in Sudan in search of food and shelter are a new famine crisis. More hungry people in more countries want food aid.
In the weeks following the start of fighting in Sudan, growing teams of women and children crossed into Chad in search of food and safety.
Chadians and foreign aid agencies already working to address food shortages in Chad have gone to great lengths to feed and shelter refugees, even if that means a bowl of oatmeal and a sheet tied to tree branches.
And as the war rages on, the scene in Chad is repeated in many of Sudan’s neighbors, as refugees flock to Horn of Africa countries already facing famine due to conflict, drought and economic turmoil.
The growing queues of refugees illustrate how Sudan’s war, a wonder for most countries in the world when armed forces and a strong paramilitary organization began fighting in the capital, Khartoum, a month ago, adds to the growing number of acutely hungry people around the world.
“What we are facing is a spread of food insecurity,” says Martin Frick, Berlin workplace director for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
Protracted wars and conflicts, from Yemen and Syria to Afghanistan, were already contributing to the global food safety crisis. Today, this war, at a global hunger hotspot, is exacerbating a crisis that, even before this year, had wiped out previous stable progress. in the cutting of acute starvation.
On the one hand, Sudan’s war erupted at a time when global food costs are high, triggered by the war in Ukraine, one of the world’s critical breadbaskets, and by persistent disruptions in the pandemic’s chain of origin.
This added a new “C” – charge – to what food experts in the past called the “3 Cs” of the food intrust crisis: conflict, COVID-19 and climate change.
With another 345 million people acutely food insecure, according to WFP – more than double the 135 million in the same Strait in 2019 – the external network struggles to cope with new conflicts, multiplying weather disasters and symptoms that major donors do not give. A contribution as much as usual.
The United Nations says the 345 million are now in countries, “many, many more [countries] than in 2019,” he added. Frick.
Increasingly intense and destructive weather is one factor, he says: last year’s historic floods in Pakistan and prolonged drought in Africa are two examples.
But with armed confrontation singled out as the main driving force behind food insecurity, Frick notes that the number of “real wars” is double what it was a decade ago.
“The number of protracted wars . . . it’s not decreasing, and then we have the new wars in Ukraine and now in Sudan that add to the already high number” of other people facing food insecurity, he said.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has been particularly damaging, he adds. Frick, because before the invasion, more than 400 million people, many in countries with vulnerable populations, relied on Ukrainian grain.
Last year, the UN and Turkey negotiated an agreement with Ukraine and Russia to ensure the passage of Ukrainian grain shipments from Black Sea ports. The deal was a success, according to the UN and other experts, and allowed Ukraine to export about 30 million metric units. tons of cereals and other foods.
WFP has been one of the main beneficiaries of the agreement, some 600,000 metric tons of cereals for its operations in several countries, in addition to Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Somalia.
But now the deal turns out to be on shaky ground; Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday that the deal had dragged on for two months, but its length remains uncertain: Russia is threatening to pull out if it doesn’t make more profit for its own food and fertilizer producers.
“Russia will have to prevent global food security from being held hostage to its cynical games of power and profit-taking,” Robert Wood, the deputy U. S. ambassador to the UN, said ahead of a Security Council consultation that discussed the grain deal on Monday.
Russia counters that the implemented grain deal is helping Western countries reduce food costs more than it benefits the world’s hungry.
Signs that “donor fatigue” may take hold among some classic food aid providers are also cause for concern. Declining or internally redirected humanitarian budgets in some countries suggest that domestic pressures for post-pandemic recovery at home may undermine enthusiasm for solving the global problem. crisis.
When a series of food value shocks hit emerging countries in 2007-2008, “we saw an impressive number of countries in the foreign network that combined to address them,” says Catherine Maldonado, senior director of food security at Mercy Corps.
“But now food costs are rising all over the world,” he adds, “and this has made it difficult for some to sign up for a global backlash, as some of the same problems they would face with humanitarian investment are felt at home. “
In this context, the G-7 organization of evolved countries is expected to address the food security factor when leaders meet in Hiroshima, Japan, this weekend.
WFP’s Frick says Western countries have responded with the utmost generosity to the need for developing food aid, led by the United States, Germany and the European Union. The result? A record $14 billion in the agency’s food aid coffers.
However, he echoes Maldonado in noting that “internal problems” in a number of hitherto reliable donor countries raise fears that the world will continue to encourage humanitarian donations as desires mount.
“Countries have been generous, but we also recognize those issues that raise considerations that we may not be able to achieve the same levels of investment this year,” he said.
However, what worries some experts at least as much as humanitarian investment is how global attention tends to focus on the crisis of the moment, such as Sudan. .
“Our focus on those major crises means we don’t communicate enough about what we can do now to prevent jobs that are already in a difficult scenario from reaching the tipping point,” said Maldonado, who was founded in Guatemala.
In fact, the UN and other organizations estimate that the number of other people facing some starvation point or unreliable food materials (not yet acutely food insecure) stands at 830 million, up from 660 million in 2019.
The “major crises” have not deterred WFP from continuing its progressive mandate, which includes projects to stimulate small-scale sustainable food production in some of the world’s food confidence hotspots.
Frick cites a task to expand “resilience villages” in parts of Niger where food production had virtually ceased. But with the advent of water harvesting measures, the land can return to crops and livestock.
Then, when Niger’s worst food security crisis in decades occurred in 2022, 80% of “resilience villages” made it through the crisis without humanitarian assistance.
“These projects give other people hope to continue their long-term career like never before,” says M. Frick, “but they also show that there are answers to the global food security crisis. “
Mercy Corps’ Maldonado cites the solar irrigation projects he visited in February in drought-stricken Ethiopia and Somalia as the kind of projects that will pay long-term dividends in the fight against food insecurity.
“These projects stay for other people, remain active like the cattle they still have, and give women farmers the stability they need” to shape income-generating cooperatives, she said.
“We can’t lose sight of those efforts that are helping communities on the brink,” Maldonado says. “That’s what we want now,” he adds, “so that we don’t see in the next few years the kind of construction in the number of other people crossing this tipping point into acute starvation that we’ve noticed this year. “
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