Around 193 million people in 53 countries and territories experienced acute food insecurity at crisis or worse levels in 2021, an increase of 40 million from the previous year. “The situation is expected to worsen in 2022,” said a report by the Global Network Against Food Crises on Wednesday.
“The war in Ukraine is supercharging a three-dimensional crisis — food, energy, and finance — with devastating impacts on the world’s most vulnerable people, countries, and economies,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a foreword to the report. “All of this comes at a time when developing countries are already struggling with cascading challenges not of their making — the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and inadequate resources amidst persistent and growing inequalities.”
Warfare was the main driver of food insecurity, responsible for 139 million of the global total of people facing acute food insecurity, said the network, an alliance of the United Nations, the EU, governmental agencies, and charities. Catastrophic weather pushed 23 million people into acute food insecurity, and economic shocks affected 30 million people.
“Millions of people are being driven to the edge of starvation,” said David Beasley, director of the World Food Program. “We urgently need emergency funding to pull them back from the brink and turn this global crisis around before it’s too late.”
The 277-page report is available here.