Conflicts, extreme weather and economic shocks have increased the number of people facing food crises by a fifth to 193 million last year, and the outlook will worsen without urgent action “on a large scale”, the agency Global Network Against Food Crises said. GNAFC), on Tuesday (3).
Created by the United Nations and the European Union, the agency said in its annual report that food insecurity has nearly doubled since 2016, when it started tracking it.
“The prospects for the future are not good. If more is not done to support rural communities, the scale of the devastation in terms of hunger and loss of livelihoods will be dire,” the GNAFC report said.
“Urgent, large-scale humanitarian action is needed to prevent this from happening.”
Defined as any food shortage that threatens lives, livelihoods or both, the number of people acutely food insecure at crisis levels or worse has increased by 40 million, or 20%, in the year 2021.
Looking ahead, the report said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – both countries are major food producers – poses serious risks to global food security, especially in countries in food crisis, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
In 2021, Somalia got over 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo received 80%, while Madagascar imported 70% of the two countries’ staple foods.
“Countries already facing high levels of acute hunger are particularly vulnerable to (war) because of their high dependence on food imports and (their) vulnerability to global food price shocks,” the report said.
Source: CNN Brasil
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