United Nations: Famine threatens Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia and Ethiopia
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program warned on Friday that Burkina Faso, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and Yemen are at risk of famine.
A report by the two organizations released Friday said that some people living in these four regions "are facing a critical state of hunger."
He warned that escalating conflicts and increasing difficulties in obtaining humanitarian aid could lead to the risk of famine.
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program point to the combination of several factors (conflict, economic decline, severe climate, and the Covid-19 epidemic) that "push the population to sink more in the emergency phase of food insecurity."
The report, issued on Friday, affirmed that these four regions are far from being isolated cases, as "the world map shows that rates of acute food insecurity have reached new heights in the world."
The report said another sixteen countries were also seriously threatened by increasing levels of acute hunger.
Among these countries are Venezuela, Haiti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan.
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program hope this report will encourage action "immediately to prevent a major crisis (or series of crises) from occurring after three to six months".
The authors of the report stress that the development of the situation in these countries depends in particular on access to humanitarian aid and continued funding of humanitarian aid.
"This report is a clear call for urgent action," WHO's emergency official, Dominique Borgon, said in a statement.
"We are extremely concerned about the combined effect of many crises that undermine people's ability to produce and obtain food, and make them more vulnerable to extreme hunger. We must reach these people so that they can obtain food, have the means to produce it and improve their livelihoods to avoid this occurring," he added. The most pessimistic scenario.
"When we declare famine, this means that many lives have already been lost. If we wait to confirm their presence, it will be people who have already lost their lives," said Margot Van der Velden, Director of the World Food Program’s emergency office.
She pointed out that "in 2011, Somalia witnessed a famine that killed 260,000 people. It was announced in July, but most of the deaths actually occurred in May. We cannot allow the situation to recur."
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