Acute food insecurity is set to increase in scale and severity in 18 hunger hotspots, a new United Nations early warning report said on Wednesday. The report highlights the urgent need for humanitarian assistance to prevent famine in Gaza and Sudan, and further deterioration of the devastating hunger crises in Haiti, Mali and South Sudan. It also warns of the lingering effects of El Niño and the looming threat of La Niña, bringing more climate extremes that could disrupt livelihoods.
The early warning report, issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP), calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods and prevent starvation and death in 18 hotspots.
These hotspots comprise a total of 17 countries and a regional cluster of four countries - drought-affected Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe - where acute hunger is at high risk of deteriorating between June and October 2024.
According to the report, Mali, the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) / Palestine, South Sudan and Sudan remain on the highest alert and require the most urgent attention. Haiti was added to the list due to escalating violence and threats to food security.
Conflict the main driver of hunger
Conflict is the main driver of hunger in all these crises. In all of the hotspots of highest concern, communities are facing or projected to face famine, or are at risk of slipping into catastrophic conditions because they already experience emergency levels of food insecurity and face severe exacerbating factors.
“Once a famine is declared, it is too late – many people will have already starved to death. In Somalia in 2011, half of the quarter of a million people who died of hunger perished before famine was officially declared. The world failed to heed the warnings at the time and the repercussions were catastrophic,” said Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director.
“We must learn the lesson and act now to stop these hotspots from igniting a firestorm of hunger. We have proven solutions to stop these crises in their tracks, but we need the resources and the political will to implement them at scale before more lives are lost.”
Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, Syria and Yemen are hotspots of very high concern, with large numbers of people facing critical acute food insecurity, coupled with worsening factors that are expected to further exacerbate life-threatening conditions in the coming months.
Since the October-2023 edition of the Hunger Hotspots report, the Central African Republic, Lebanon, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Zambia have joined Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Somalia, and Zimbabwe on the list of hunger hotspots where acute food insecurity is expected to further deteriorate during the outlook period.
The report finds that many hotspots are facing growing hunger crises and highlights the worrying multiplier effect of simultaneous and overlapping shocks on acute food insecurity.
Conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks continue to push vulnerable households into food crises.
“The daunting prospects highlighted in this report should serve as a wake-up call to all of us. We need to spearhead the shift from responding to crises after they occur to more proactive anticipatory approaches, prevention and resilience building to help vulnerable communities cope with upcoming shocks,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu.
“Acting ahead of crises can save lives, reduce food shortages and protect livelihoods at a much lower cost than a not timely humanitarian response”
The ongoing war in the Gaza Strip of the OPT/Palestine is expected to further exacerbate already catastrophic levels of acute hunger, with starvation and deaths adding to the unprecedented death toll from, widespread destruction and displacement of almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip - the report warns.
In mid-March 2024, the two northern governorates of the Gaza Strip were projected to face famine by the end of May unless hostilities ceased, humanitarian agencies were granted full access, and essential services were restored.
More than one million people - half the population of Gaza - are expected to face death and starvation (IPC Phase 5, Catastrophe) by mid-July. The report also warns of the wider regional impact of the crisis, which threatens to exacerbate already high food security needs in neighboring Lebanon and Syria.
In Sudan, where time is running out to save lives and the lean season is approaching, conflict and displacement continue at an alarming pace and scale, the report warns. The outlook for food production is bleak, and the window of opportunity to support farmers before the main planting season ends and the rains begin is rapidly shrinking, limiting access to the hardest-hit communities.
18 million people are acutely food insecure in the Northeast African state, including 3.6 million acutely malnourished children, and famine is fast approaching for millions of people in Darfur, Kordofan, Al Jazirah and Khartoum, as recently noted by the heads of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC).
Sudan - now in its second year of war - is home to the largest number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the world, more than 10 million. More than two million people have fled across borders, adding to the burden on neighboring countries hosting ever-increasing numbers of refugees and returnees - particularly in South Sudan and Chad, where existing hunger crises are being exacerbated by the spillover from the deadly conflict in Sudan.
In Haiti, in the midst of a protracted economic crisis, violence linked to non-state armed groups (NSAGs) has disrupted food supplies and forced more than 362,000 people to flee their homes and abandon their livelihoods - including farmland - amid continued uncertainty about the timing of the deployment of a Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission.
The report warns that critical levels of food insecurity and malnutrition in the Carribean country are at risk of further deterioration, with the threat of catastrophic conditions re-emerging, particularly in areas where humanitarian access is restricted by gang violence.
In Mali, already critical and catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity are expected to worsen, mainly due to an intensification of the conflict and made worse by the full withdrawal of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) at the end of 2023.
In South Sudan, the number of people at risk of starvation and death is projected to nearly double between April and July 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Tight domestic food supplies and sharp currency depreciation are driving up food prices, compounded by likely flooding and recurring waves of subnational conflict.
A projected further increase in returnees and refugees from Sudan is likely to increase acute food insecurity among both new arrivals and host communities.
Extreme weather events and the climate crisis
Weather extremes related to the climate crisis, such as excessive rainfall, tropical storms, cyclones, floods, droughts, severe heat waves and increased climate variability, remain key drivers of acute food insecurity in many countries and regions. And things could get much worse.
According to a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report released Wednesday, each of the past 12 months has set a new global temperature record for the time of year. The UN agency said it is likely (86 percent) that at least one of the next five years will be the warmest on record, surpassing 2023 - the hottest year on record.
The WMO warned that global temperatures are likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels at least temporarily during the next five years. While there is an 80 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, there is also a 47 percent chance that the average global temperature over the entire five-year period 2024-2028 will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The previous Hunger Hotspots report, published in 2023, warned of the threat posed by the El Niño phenomenon and associated extreme climate events, which put millions of people at risk of hunger and malnutrition. As the El Niño episode comes to an end, it is clear that its impacts have been severe and widespread - including devastating droughts in southern Africa and extensive flooding in East Africa and other regions of the world.
El Niño occurs on average every two to seven years, with episodes typically lasting 9 to 12 months. It is a naturally occurring climate pattern associated with warming ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. However, the pattern occurs in the context of a climate that has been altered by human activities.
La Niña is a climate pattern that typically follows El Niño. The new report warns that conditions triggered by the La Niña phenomenon are expected to prevail between August 2024 and February 2025, significantly affecting rainfall distribution and temperatures.
The shift in climate could have a major impact on several hotspots, including the risk of flooding in parts of South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Chad, Mali and Nigeria, as well as Sudan. Meanwhile, the Caribbean is bracing for an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season. The report warns that, given the uncertainty of current forecasts, continued monitoring will be essential.
Scaling up humanitarian response and anticipatory action
The Hunger Hotspots report identifies areas where acute food insecurity is likely to increase during the outlook period. The hotspots are identified through forward-looking analysis and selected through a consensus-based process involving FAO and WFP field and technical teams, as well as analysts specializing in conflict, economic risk and natural hazards.
The report provides concrete, country-specific recommendations on priorities for anticipatory action and immediate emergency response to meet existing and emerging needs to save lives and ensure that predictable hazards do not become full-blown humanitarian disasters.
Immediate, large-scale humanitarian action will be critical to prevent further starvation and death - particularly in Mali, Palestine, South Sudan, Sudan and Haiti, the report warns.
However, the report also urges that in order to effectively address and prevent famine, emergency agriculture - in addition to emergency food and cash assistance - must be provided in a balanced way. In addition, more investment is needed in integrated, multi-agency solutions that can help meaningfully address food insecurity and reduce reliance on emergency food aid.
Further information
Full text: Hunger Hotspots: FAO–WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity: June to October 2024 outlook, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), report, published June 5, 2024
https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/b7e454d0-f24c-44e0-bcdf-530d49041cac