While the world's farmers produce more than enough food to feed the planet's 8 billion people, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said "hunger and malnutrition are a fact of life" for billions, as 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. In a message ahead of Wednesday's World Food Day, Guterres said 733 million people worldwide lack food because of "conflict, marginalization, climate change, poverty and economic downturns.
Global hunger remains alarmingly high. While one in eleven people worldwide and one in five in Africa faced hunger in 2023, some 282 million people in 59 countries and territories around the world were acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was established 79 years ago, on October 16, 1945, with a mandate to improve people's access to food that not only alleviates hunger, but is also safe, nutritious and culturally acceptable.
But Dominique Burgeon, director of the FAO's liaison office in Geneva, told journalists Tuesday that “We continue to witness severe imbalances across the world.”
“One in 11 people in the world go to bed hungry every day, over 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. […] We have also the issue of stunting and wasting. As we speak, about 148 million children under the age of 5 are too short for their age, and 45 million are too thin for their height,” he said.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said children suffering from wasting, which is caused by a lack of nutritious and safe food and repeated bouts of disease, are dangerously thin and their immune systems are weak, “leaving them vulnerable to growth failure, poor development and death.”
Two million severely malnourished children at risk of death
UNICEF on Monday appealed for US$165 million to provide essential, ready-to-use therapeutic food for nearly 2 million severely malnourished children "at risk of death" in the 12 hardest-hit countries - Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Pakistan and Uganda.
“Levels of severe wasting in children under 5 years remain gravely high in several countries, fueled by conflict, economic shocks and climate crises,” it warned.
The situation in Africa's Sahel region is particularly dire, exacerbated by prolonged droughts, floods and erratic rainfall. These conditions lead to food shortages and high food prices, resulting in higher levels of severe wasting.
“In the past two years an unprecedented global response has allowed the scale-up of nutrition programs to contain child wasting and its associated mortality in countries severely affected by conflict, climate and economic shocks, and the resulting maternal and child nutrition crisis,” said UNICEF Director of Child Nutrition and Development Victor Aguayo.
“But urgent action is needed now to save the lives of nearly two million children who are fighting this silent killer.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is among several humanitarian organizations expressing alarm at the escalating incidence of acute hunger and malnutrition in large parts of Africa.
“The consequences of armed conflict in the region of Lake Chad, compounded by the effect of climate change, continue killing people, and especially the most vulnerable, the young children,” said Yann Bonzon, head of the ICRC delegation for Nigeria.
“Every day, doctors and nurses in health facilities we support in northeast Nigeria receive and treat severely malnourished kids. Desperate mothers tell us every day how healthy children become weak and fall sick, and how putting food on the table has turned into a daily struggle,” he told journalists, speaking in Nigeria.
Underscoring the gravity of the situation, he noted that the number of children treated for severe malnutrition at ICRC health facilities in Northeast Nigeria has risen by 24 percent in the past year.
Across the Lake Chad region, humanitarian agencies estimate that nearly 6.1 million people - the highest number in four years - will face food shortages in the coming months.
“Farmers tell us how the rampant insecurity due to conflict is preventing farmers from planting their crops” and climate shocks have damaged crops, “contributing to a food crisis across Lake Chad in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria,” Bonzon said.
Southern Africa's worst hunger crisis in decades
A similar scenario is unfolding in southern Africa. The United Nations is warning that a widespread drought in the region, triggered by an El Niño weather pattern, could turn into a full-scale humanitarian disaster without international assistance.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said the historic drought has devastated the lives of more than 27 million people across the region, noting that some 21 million children are malnourished.
“For many communities, this is the worst food crisis yet,” said Tomson Phiri, WFP spokesperson for Southern Africa.
“October in Southern Africa marks the start of the lean season, and each month is expected to be worse than the previous one until harvests next year in March and April,” he said.
“Crops have failed, livestock has perished and children are lucky to receive one meal per day. The situation is dire, and the need for action has never been clearer.”
WFP said a record five countries – Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe – have declared the hunger crisis “a state of disaster” and have called for international support. The agency noted that Angola and Mozambique are also severely affected.
The UN agency expressed concern that urgent appeals for international support are falling on deaf ears, noting that “we have only received one-fifth of the $369 million needed to provide life-saving assistance to millions in southern Africa.”
Record number of Africans facing food crises in conflict zones
According to a report released Wednesday by the US-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 80 percent of the record 163 million Africans facing acute food insecurity are in conflict-affected countries, including some 840,000 people in famine conditions in Sudan, South Sudan and Mali.
13 of the 16 African countries with the highest number of people facing acute food insecurity are in war and conflict zones, underscoring that conflict remains the main driver of acute food insecurity in Africa.
Conflict-affected countries account for 18.6 million (94 percent) of those facing emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of food insecurity and 840,000 (100 percent) of those facing catastrophic (IPC Phase 5, Catastrophe) levels of food insecurity.
Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the three countries with the largest number of acutely food insecure people - each with more than 20 million people facing at least crisis levels of food insecurity. Together, these three countries account for about half of all acutely food insecure people on the continent.
While four countries - South Sudan (64 percent), Sudan (53 percent), Namibia (48 percent), and the Central African Republic (44 percent) - have 40 percent or more of their population experiencing acute hunger, some 23 out of 54 African countries have at least 10 percent of their population facing acute food insecurity.
Similar analyses have been released. According to a report published Tuesday by Oxfam America, 54 conflict-affected countries account for nearly all the 281.6 million people facing acute hunger in the world today. Conflict is also a major cause of forced displacement in these countries, which has now reached a record high of more than 123 million people globally.
The Oxfam report argues that conflict is not only a major driver of hunger, but that warring parties actively weaponize food itself by deliberately targeting food, water and energy infrastructure and blocking humanitarian aid. In addition, war and conflict often exacerbate other factors, such as climate shocks like droughts and floods, economic instability and inequality, to devastate people's livelihoods.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: No Time to Waste, 2024 Update and Call to Urgent Action, UNICEF, report, released October 14, 2024
https://www.unicef.org/media/163336/file/NTTW-2024.pdf
Full text: Famine Takes Grip in Africa’s Prolonged Conflict Zones, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, report, published October 15, 2024
https://africacenter.org/spotlight/famine-takes-grip-in-africas-prolonged-conflict-zones/
Full text: Food Wars: Conflict, Hunger, and Globalization, 2023, Oxfam America, report, published October 15, 2024
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621657/bp-food-wars-241016-en.pdf