United Nations: About 258 million people in 58 countries face acute food insecurity

Several United Nations agencies announced in a report on Wednesday that the number of people who needed urgent food assistance last year as a result of conflicts, economic shocks and climatic disasters rose to 258 million, compared to 193 million in 2021.

This is the highest number ever recorded, since the report was first published in 2017.

The severity of food insecurity increased from 21.3% in 2021 to 22.7% in 2022, remaining unprecedentedly high and highlighting an alarming trend of deteriorating acute food insecurity globally.

In the introduction to this seventh edition of the “Global Report on Food Crises”, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, considered that this reality represents a stain on humanity because it has failed to make progress towards eliminating hunger, which represents the second goal of the United Nations for sustainable development.

The 17 parties to this network, which includes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Program and the European Union, confirmed that food insecurity is rising “for the fourth year in a row” with millions of people suffering “from hunger so severe that it directly threatens their lives.”

The report includes five additional countries than the previous report, i.e. 58 countries, which contributed to raising the numbers.

The report stresses that food insecurity remains at an “unacceptable level”, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nigeria and even Yemen.

The findings of the report indicated that the impact of the war in Ukraine had a negative impact on global food systems due to the major contributions of both Ukraine and Russia to global production of basic food commodities, especially wheat, corn and sunflower oil.

The report called on the international community to make a qualitative shift towards better prevention, prediction and targeting to address the root causes of food crises, rather than responding to their effects when they occur.

The FAO said in a summary of the report: “Conflicts are still the main driver of food crises,” but the economic shocks associated with the Covid-19 epidemic and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine additionally affected some countries in 2022.

Extreme weather events linked to climate change such as the historic drought in the Horn of Africa or devastating floods in Pakistan have also been a major cause of exacerbating food insecurity.