An estimated 80 percent of Yemen’s food supply arrives by boat, so the recent closure of its ports makes famine a likelihood across the country, says the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. Meanwhile, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that warfare and climate change are driving up hunger rates in sub-Saharan Africa, ending years of improving food security.
In an alert, FEWS NET said Yemen, whose ports are being blockaded by Saudi Arabia, “already faced the largest food security emergency in the world,” with 15 million people short of food even before its ports were closed. “Therefore, a prolonged closure of key ports risks an unprecedented deterioration in food security to famine … across large areas of the country.” Famine could appear in three or four months in many areas, perhaps sooner in the regions with the greatest shortages, said FEWS NET, which was created by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Yemen, in the Middle East, and four nations in Africa — South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, and Ethiopia — are the countries facing the most severe food shortages, according to FEWS NET.
Some 224 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished, according to an FAO report on food security and nutrition on the continent, and a quarter of all the undernourished people in the world are in Africa. The FAO estimated the food insecurity rate at 22.7 percent, compared with 20.6 percent in 2010. “In sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of the undernourished population in 2016 live in countries affected by conflict. The prevalence of undernourishment is about twice as high in conflict-affected countries with a protracted crisis than in countries not affected by conflict, and nutrition outcomes are also generally worse in these countries.”