UN report says 282 million people faced acute hunger in 2023, with the worst famine in Gaza
UNITED NATIONS — Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries suffered from acute hunger in 2023, with war-torn Gaza the area experiencing the highest number of people facing famine, according to the Global Report on Food Crises released on Wednesday.
According to the UN report, 24 million more people will face acute food shortages than in 2022, due to the sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. The number of countries with food crises being monitored has also expanded.
Máximo Torero, chief economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said 705,000 people in five countries are in phase 5, the highest level, on a hunger scale determined by international experts – the highest number since the global report in 2016 started and quadrupled. the number of that year.
More than 80% of those facing imminent famine – 577,000 people – were in Gaza, he said. South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali are each home to many thousands of people who also face catastrophic hunger.
According to the report’s projections, about 1.1 million people in Gaza, where the war between Israel and Hamas is now in its seventh month, and 79,000 people in South Sudan are expected to be in phase 5 and face famine by July to get.
According to the report, the conflict will also continue to exacerbate food insecurity in Haiti, where gangs control large parts of the capital.
While the El Nino phenomenon peaked in early 2024, “its full impact on food security – including flooding and poor rainfall in parts of East Africa and drought in southern Africa, especially Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe – will continue throughout the year by manifesting. .”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the report “an overview of human failings,” and that “in a world of plenty, children are dying of hunger.”
“The conflicts that have broken out over the past 12 months are exacerbating the dire global situation,” he wrote in the foreword to the report.
Guterres highlighted the conflict in the Gaza Strip because the enclave is home to the largest number of people facing catastrophic hunger. There is also the year-old conflict in Sudan, which has caused the world’s largest internal displacement crisis “with dire consequences for hunger and nutrition,” he added.
According to the report, more than 36 million people in 39 countries and territories face acute famine, one step below the level of famine in Phase 4, with more than a third in Sudan and Afghanistan. It is an increase of one million people compared to 2022, the report said.
Arif Husain, chief economist at the UN World Food Program, said every year since 2016 the number of people in acute food insecurity has risen, and is now more than double the number before the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the report looks at 59 countries, he said the goal is to get data from 73 countries where there are people who are acutely food insecure.
Secretary-General Guterres called for an urgent response to the report’s findings, which address the root causes of acute hunger and malnutrition while transforming the systems that deliver food. Funding is also not keeping pace with needs, he pointed out.
“We must have the financing, and we must also have the access,” WFP’s Husain said, emphasizing that the two “go hand in hand” and are essential to tackling acute food insecurity.
The report is the flagship publication of the Food Security Information Network and is based on a collaboration of 16 partners, including UN agencies, regional and multinational bodies, the European Union, the US Agency for International Development, technical organizations and others.