Food crises: 124 million people suffering from acute hunger

124 million across 51 countries faced crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse in 2017, warns the Global Report on Food Crises presented during a technical briefing on 25 April in New York.

“Reports such as these give us the vital data and analyses to better understand the challenge. It is now up to us to take action to meet the needs of those facing the daily scourge of hunger and to tackle its root causes”, said the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressing the participants through a video message.

The technical briefing presented the main findings of the Global Report on Food Crises 2018, prepared by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN). According to the report, the 124 million people suffering from acute food insecurity in 51 countries in 2017 represented an 11% increase on the total affected the previous year: 108 million in 45 countries. An estimated 52 million children were acutely malnourished in 2017. The main causes of the increase in acute food insecurity were new outbreaks and intensified conflict & insecurity and consecutive climate shocks.

Organized on the margins of the High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, the briefing was co-hosted by the Delegation of the European Union, the Permanent Missions of the Netherlands and Zambia, as well as FAO and WFP on behalf of the Food Security Information Network.

Ambassador Lazarous Kapambwe, Permanent Representative of Zambia, welcomed the report and called for more coordinated, sustainable and resilient responses to hunger or humanitarian crises.

Ambassador Lise Gregoire-van Haaren, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands, highlighted that extreme hunger was a manmade issue and should have manmade solutions.

Dominique Burgeon, Director of the FAO Emergencies and Rehabilitation Division and Leader of the FAO Strategic Programme on Resilience, highlighted that humanitarian assistance had been successful to contain famine, but that more needed to be done.

"Humanitarian action is playing a critical role in keeping people from falling off the cliff, but it is not sufficient to pull them away from the cliff. We need to step up efforts to protect agricultural livelihoods and invest in the humanitarian-development nexus,” said Burgeon. He added that agriculture was central because the rural population constitutes around 80% of the extremely food insecure in many countries. 

Arif Husain, Chief Economist and Director of the WFP Food Security Analysis and Trends Service, emphasized that the outlook on extreme food insecurity did not look bright, stressing the importance of addressing structural issues. He also noted that 80% of WFP food assistance resources were used in conflict-affected areas.

Diane Holland, Senior Nutrition Advisor at UNICEF, highlighted that a significant number of wasted and stunted children live in countries highlighted by the report. We can no longer ignore the issue of stunting in emergencies, and the expanded nutrition analysis in the food crisis discussion is a critical contribution to the humanitarian and development communities as well as the families and children they serve. She called for better and more robust data to influence decision-making and allow early action.

Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, Chief of the Policy Branch at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, noted that short-term humanitarian support is essential but not sufficient, underscoring the need to tackle development dimensions from the outset to achieve longer-term improvements. He also said that a more automatic, data-driven, participatory process is needed in funding to tackle acute and chronic food insecurity.

Jesús Díaz Carazo, First Secretary of Humanitarian Affairs at the EU delegation to the UN, concluded the event by commenting that the report is a catalyst for creating ideas, fostering necessary discussions and triggering action in response to food crises.

About the Global Report on Food Crises

The Global Report on Food Crises is the result of the strategic partnership of the European Union (EU), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) with key partners such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the EU Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Global Food Security Cluster (gFSC), the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Central American Integration System (SICA).