2023-05-03 11:07:27
As a result of conflicts, economic shocks and climatic events, food insecurity has worsened worldwide in 2022. Some 258 million people needed emergency assistance, compared to 193 million in 2021, according to the UN.
“This seventh edition of the World Report on Food Crises is a scathing observation of humanity’s failure to move towards the elimination of hunger, the number 2 sustainable development goal” of the UN, lamented the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, in the introduction to the annual report drawn up by several UN agencies.
Acute food insecurity increased last year “for the fourth consecutive year”, with 65 million additional people “suffering from hunger so severe that it directly threatens their lives”, underline 17 actors of the global network on the food crises, including the European Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP).
The 2022 report includes five more countries than the previous one, i.e. 58 countries in total, which also helps to push the figures up.
Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria very affected
Acute food insecurity encompasses levels 3 to 5 of the international food security scale: “crisis”, “emergency” and “disaster”. It “remains at an unacceptable level”, particularly in the DRC, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nigeria and even Yemen, highlights the report.
376,000 people are in the most critical “disaster” phase, and 57% of them live in Somalia. Since the end of 2020, this country has suffered, like the rest of the Greater Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya and Sudan), the worst drought in the last forty years, which a recent scientific study by the World Weather Attribution clearly blamed on global warming.
However, “humanitarian funding to fight once morest hunger and malnutrition is not up to par”, regrets Mr. Guterres.
Economic shocks
In the 58 countries analyzed in this report, “more than 35 million children under the age of 5 suffered from wasting” (malnutrition), 9.2 million of them at acute levels.
“Conflicts remain the main driver of food crises” in 2022, says the FAO in a summary of the report, recalling however that these crises are often due to several factors.
Economic shocks, linked in particular to the Covid-19 pandemic and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine, weighed more heavily last year in certain countries, notably in Afghanistan, Syria and South Sudan.
“The report confirms the impact of the war in Ukraine on global food security, due to the major contributions of Ukraine and Russia to the global production and trade of fuel, agricultural inputs and essential food products , in particular wheat, corn and sunflower oil”, underlines the organization.
Impact of the war in Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 “disrupted agricultural production and trade in the Black Sea region, causing an unprecedented spike in international food prices in the first half of 2022”.
Although an agreement allowing the export of Ukrainian cereals through the Black Sea on July 22, 2022 helped bring prices down, “the war continues to indirectly affect food security, especially in low-income countries, dependent on food imports”, and already weakened by the pandemic.
Extreme weather events such as the drought in the Horn of Africa and the devastating floods in Pakistan are also major causes of the aggravation of this food insecurity.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
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