"We must sound the alarm", the goal to eradicate world hunger by 2030 is slipping dangerously away, five international organisations working on food security warned the UN yesterday (Wednesday), outlining a particularly "dark picture" for 2021, even before war breaks out in Ukraine.
"We had hoped that today the world would have overcome the crisis of the new coronavirus pandemic, but it is still here" and is worsening due to armed conflicts and other humanitarian crises, the Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Chu Dongyu, stated during a press conference in New York.
"From 702 to 828 million people affected by hunger in 2021," or about 9.8% of the world's population, summarize a joint report by FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
This number is up by 46 million compared to 2020 and by 150 million compared to 2019, the two years marked by the pandemic and the continued weakening of food systems.
Some 670 million people are expected to continue to suffer from hunger towards the end of the decade, a number "similar to 2015" when this target was set by the international community.
The five international organisations are "sounding the alarm" ahead of the "intensification of the key drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition: conflict, extreme weather events and economic shocks".
"The question is not whether we will continue to face adversity in the future," they conclude, "but whether to take bolder measures to increase resilience against future shocks," such as the war in Ukraine, which is raising bottlenecks in supply chains and driving up prices.
The Horn of Africa (Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia) is also experiencing one of its worst droughts in over 40 years, decimating livestock and crops and threatening to cause a famine that will affect over 16 million people, according to the UN.
More broadly, 2.3 billion people suffered acute or moderate food insecurity at some point in 2021, meaning they lacked access to adequate food or experienced difficulties feeding themselves during certain periods.
The majority of them live in rural areas of developing countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, the IFAD president explained.
"The most shocking thing about this situation is that the main cause (of famine) is not so much a global production deficit as the deeply unequal and unbalanced global food system," the French branch of the NGO Oxfam commented in a statement.
Source: CNA
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