Last year, conflicts, extreme weather, and economic shocks increased the number of people facing acute food insecurity or hunger by a fifth to 193 million. The Ukraine crisis means the situation will worsen unless urgent action takes place, according to a UN agency.
The United Nations and the European Union’s Global Network Against Food Crises said in its annual report that the number of people facing acute food insecurity and requiring life-saving food assistance had nearly doubled in the six years since they began tracking it in 2016.
The GNAFC report said, “the outlook moving forward is not good. If more is not done to support rural communities, the scale of the devastation in terms of hunger and lost livelihoods will be appalling.”
“Urgent humanitarian action is needed on a massive scale to prevent that from happening.”
“Catastrophe” phase of food insecurity
If defined, acute food insecurity is a lack of food that threatens lives, livelihoods, or both. It increased by 40 million people, or 20%, last year.
In Ethiopia, South Sudan, southern Madagascar, and Yemen, 570,000 people faced the most severe or “catastrophe” phase of food insecurity. It is up 571 percent from 2016. This requires immediate action to avoid widespread livelihood collapse, starvation, and death.
In the future, the research warns that the Russia Ukraine crisis poses a serious threat to global food security. Both of them are important food producers. It is particularly in food-insecure nations such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
In 2021, Somalia obtained more than 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. The Democratic Republic of the Congo received 80%, and Madagascar bought 70% of its wheat from the two countries.
“Countries already coping with high levels of acute hunger are particularly vulnerable to (the war) due to their high dependency on imports of food and (their) vulnerability to global food price shocks,” the report said.