Globally, the number suffering from chronic malnutrition reached 828 million last year, an increase of about 46 million on the previous year and a threefold increase if measured since the world was shut down due to Covid, according to a report. With the price of fuel, staple foods and fertilizers soaring since the invasion of Ukraine, however, that total is expected to rise even further next year – a scenario that could see some of its poorest world to fall into starvation, the most extreme form of food deprivation. “There is a real risk that these numbers will rise even further in the coming months,” said David Beasley, executive director of the UN’s World Food Program (WFP). “Global price increases in food, fuel and fertilizer as a result of the crisis in Ukraine threaten to push countries around the world into famine. “The result will be global destabilization, hunger and mass migration on an unprecedented scale,” he warned. “We must act today to prevent this impending disaster.” Due to the uncertainty caused by the lingering impact of the Covid shutdowns, the report, published on Wednesday, is unable to give an exact figure for the number of people who went hungry in 2021, instead estimating the total to be somewhere between 702 and 828 million. . If the latter, that would equate to about 10.5% of the world’s population. An estimated 45 million children under the age of five suffered from wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, which increases children’s risk of death by up to 12 times, the report said. About 149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to chronic lack of essential nutrients. A malnourished baby is being treated at the hospital in Byandoa, Somalia. Globally, 45 million children are wasted. Photo: Gary Calton/The Observer Gilbert Houngbo, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said chronic undernourishment is projected to affect nearly 670 million people in 2030 – a figure similar to that in 2015, when the UN pledged to end hunger by 2030. as part of the sustainable development goals. “[It] it means that all the effort in those 15 years will be wiped out by the different crises that the world is going through,” he told the Guardian. Hungbo, a former prime minister of Togo, agreed that there was a clear risk of starvation in some countries, but added: “I want to think there is still time to avoid getting there.” The only “silver lining” of the crisis in Ukraine, he added, was that the world was forced to pay attention to the vulnerabilities of the global food system. Urging the international community to “seize the moment” and make “a decisive shift” in agricultural policy, he said: “Investing in resilience is the real answer. If famine occurred, food distribution may have been inevitable. “But for God’s sake, food aid is not the answer,” he added. “And today, if we invest in the resilience of local producers, we can avoid this famine.” The tool used by the UN and the wider international community to measure food insecurity – the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) defines famine as extreme food deprivation. “Hunger, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident,” he says. The last officially declared famine was in parts of South Sudan in 2017. Before that, a famine in Somalia is estimated to have killed nearly 260,000 people between 2010 and 2012. Both countries still suffer from acute food insecurity, and a WFP spokesman warned last month that only a massive humanitarian effort could prevent parts of Somalia from returning to famine in the coming months.
The 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report was jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization, IFAD, Unicef, WFP and the World Health Organization.
