Famine

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns that Yemenis are silently suffering from hunger and malnourishment amid a severe lack of funding and ongoing insecurity that are exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Yemen is one of the most food-insecure countries in the world and now has the highest number of people facing emergency levels of hunger.

Only 47 percent of hunger funding needs through the United Nations humanitarian system are met, leaving a hunger funding gap of 53%, according to the international non-governmental organization (NGO) Action Against Hunger. Released Wednesday, the 2023 Hunger Funding Gap report also found that countries experiencing the worst hunger crises received less hunger funding than countries with lower rates of hunger.

United States national Cindy McCain took over Wednesday as the new head of the World Food Programme (WFP). The new Executive Director said in her first statement that her priorities for the United Nations agency were increasing its resources, improving its effectiveness and scaling up partnerships and innovation.

The Russian government’s decision to suspend participation in an agreement that allowed Ukrainian grain to be shipped through the Black Sea will significantly harm efforts to provide food to millions of people around the world facing food insecurity, activist groups warned on Monday.  The agreement has ensured the safe passage of over 32 million metric tons of food commodities from Ukrainian ports.

Almost 4.2 million people in Malawi are estimated to experience high levels of acute food insecurity between May and September 2024, including 56,000 people in IPC Phase 4 (emergency) and 4.1 million people in IPC Phase 3 (crisis), according to the latest IPC analysis. The analysis, released on Friday, warns that most people facing crisis or emergency levels are unable to produce enough of their own food and rely on market purchases.

Thousands of Palestinians have been arbitrarily and secretly detained, tortured and ill-treated by Israeli authorities since the October 7 attack by Palestinian armed groups that triggered Israel's war in the Gaza Strip, according to a report released Wednesday by the United Nations human rights office. Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment continues throughout much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in increasing civilian deaths, maiming, injuries, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure.

A hospital in war-torn Sudan has reportedly been attacked, killing at least 64 people and marking the latest in a series of assaults on health facilities. Late Friday, the Al Deain Teaching Hospital in Al Deain, the capital of East Darfur State, was struck, leaving scores of civilians dead, including 13 children, two nurses, a doctor, and multiple patients. The latest attack also injured 89 people, including eight health care workers.

According to a new report from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) released Thursday, Sudan is not only the world’s largest displacement crisis, but also the most neglected. The non-governmental organization (NGO) warns that neglected crises are particularly affected by brutal cuts to humanitarian funding by donors such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

As the flames of war continue to engulf Sudan, the United Nations Security Council was urged Monday to prevent the horrors of this conflict from recurring and to stop those enabling the violence from spreading instability further across the region. Escalating violence in Sudan is placing civilians at extreme risk and triggering new waves of displacement, particularly in the Kordofan region.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is warning that the United States' and Israel's war on Iran and the regional spillover across the Middle East could push global hunger to record levels. The ongoing conflict could cause the greatest disruption to lifesaving humanitarian work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, WFP said on Tuesday.

Israel's air and ground operations in the Gaza Strip since October 7 last year have killed more than 27,300 people, about 70 percent of them women and children, injured more than 66,000 and left at least 8,000 missing, most of them presumed dead. At the same time, the needs of more than two million people trapped in Gaza, already facing a humanitarian catastrophe, are at risk of becoming even more dire following the decision by 18 donor countries to suspend financial contributions to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

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.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that the ongoing conflict and spreading disease outbreaks are having a devastating impact on children in Sudan. Separately, independent human rights investigators report that the civil war in Sudan is intensifying, marked by an increased use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and a sharp rise in sexual and gender-based violence. Countless civilians caught in the conflict face devastating consequences.

Amid the unimaginable suffering faced by Palestinians in Gaza, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Monday called for restraint in light of the Israeli military incursion into the city of Rafah. Warning of the risk of further atrocity crimes committed by Israeli forces in the Gaza war, the UN rights chief also urged Israel to comply with legally binding orders from the International Court of Justice and to respect the full range of international humanitarian law.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is warning of a rapidly escalating global hunger crisis, as nearly 318 million people are currently facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. On Monday, WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain called for immediate action from world leaders to address the root causes of food insecurity and end man-made famines.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that disease outbreaks, malnutrition and non-communicable diseases are rising in war-torn Sudan, with devastating consequences for millions of people forced to flee their homes in the face of escalating violence. Since conflict erupted April 15, some 6 million people have become displaced inside Sudan or have sought refuge in neighboring countries.