Zambia

A new joint United Nations report warns that people in five hunger hotspots — Sudan, Palestine (Occupied Palestinian Territory), South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali — face extreme hunger, starvation, and death in the next five months unless urgent humanitarian action is swiftly taken to de-escalate conflict, stop displacement, and provide full-scale aid.

As global humanitarian funding plummets due to extreme funding cuts by the United States, the United Nations on Thursday released US$110 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to scale up life-saving assistance in ten of the world's most underfunded and neglected crises in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In total, more than 307 million people around the world are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

A new United Nations report - out this week - warns that the spread of conflict, armed violence, climate hazards and economic stress are driving severe hunger and, in some cases, famine conditions in 22 countries and territories, with no likelihood of improvement in the next six months. Acute food insecurity in these hotspots will increase in scale and severity, pushing millions of people to the brink.

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.