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United Nations: The United Nations food leader warned Thursday that the world is facing “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude,” with up to 345 million more people marching toward famine, and 70 million close to famine during the war in Ukraine.
David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Programme, told the UN Security Council that the other 345 million people facing an acute lack of food confidence in the 82 countries where the company operates constitute 2 1/2 times the number of other people in situations of acute food unconfidence. lack of confidence in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. hit in 2020.
He said it is incredibly worrying that 50 million of those other people in forty-five countries suffer from very acute malnutrition and are “knocking on the door of famine. “
“What used to be a wave of famine is now a tsunami of famine,” he said, pointing to emerging conflicts, the economic effects of the pandemic, climate change, emerging fuel and the war in Ukraine.
Since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, Beasley said, rising costs of food, fuel and fertilizer have pushed 70 million more people to the brink of starvation.
Despite the July agreement allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grains from 3 Black Sea ports that had been blocked through Russia and continued efforts to bring Russian fertilizers back to global markets, “there is a genuine and harmful threat of famines this year,” he said. said. ” And in 2023, the current food value crisis may turn into a food availability crisis if we don’t act. “
The Security Council focused on the conflict-induced lack of food confidence and the threat of famine in Ethiopia, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. But Beasley and UN humanitarian leader Martin Griffiths also warned about the food crisis in Somalia, whether they visited recently, and Griffiths also placed Afghanistan in the most sensible place on the list.
“Famine will take a position in Somalia,” Griffiths said, and “rest assured that it will not be the only position either. “
He cited recent evidence that has shown that “hundreds of thousands of other people face catastrophic levels of hunger,” are at the worst point of “starvation. “
Beasley recalled his warning to the council in April 2020 “that we were facing a famine, a famine of biblical proportions. “He said then that the world “has increased its investment and its super response, and we have moved away from disaster. “. “
“Once we got back to the limit, even worse, and we want to do everything we can, all on deck with each and every fiber of our body,” he said. “The other hungry people in the world are counting us, and . . . we will have to not let them down.
Griffiths said the widespread and developing lack of food confidence is the result of the direct and indirect effects of fighting and violence that kill and injure civilians, forces families to flee the land they rely on as a source of income and food, and leads to economic decline and the emerging costs of food they cannot afford.
After more than seven years of war in Yemen, he said, “around 19 million people, six out of 10, are acutely food insecure, some 160,000 people are facing a crisis and 538,000 young people are severely malnourished. “
Beasley said the war in Ukraine is fueling inflation in Yemen, which is 90 percent dependent on food imports. The World Food Programme expects to provide assistance to around 18 million people, but their prices have risen by 30 percent this year to $2. 6 billion. As a result, it was forced to reduce its size, so Yemenis receive only two-thirds of their previous rations this month, he said.
Beasley said South Sudan faces “its acute rate of famine since independence in 2011” from Sudan. He said another 7. 7 million people, or more than 60 percent of the population, are “facing critical or worse levels of food insecurity. “Without a political solution to the escalating violence and really extensive spending on aid programs, “many other people in South Sudan will die,” he warned.
In the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions of northern Ethiopia, more than thirteen million people want life-saving food, Griffiths said. He pointed to a survey conducted in Tigray in June that found that 89% of people were food insecure, with “more than a portion of them being severely affected. “Beasley said a truce in March had allowed WFP and its partners to succeed in nearly five million more people in the Tigray region, but the resumption of fighting in recent weeks “threatens to push many hungry and exhausted families overboard. “
In northeastern Nigeria, the UN predicts that another 4. 1 million people face peak levels of food insecurity, adding up to 588,000 who faced emergency levels between June and August, Griffiths said. , and the UN fears that “some other people are already at the point of crisis and are already dying. “
Griffiths suggested to the Security Council that it “spare no effort” to try to end those conflicts and increase investment for humanitarian operations, saying U. N. appeals in those four countries are “well below the investment required. “(AP
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