Around 155 million people faced acute food insecurity in 2020 as a result of global conflicts, economic crises and extreme weather conditions, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other agencies said.
Of the 155 million, 1.3 lakh people needed urgent food to prevent widespread death from starvation, said the report which predicted the outlook for 2021 as equally grim or even worse.
The situation was described in the “2021 Global Report on Food Crises” issued by the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC), an international alliance bringing together the UN’s FAO and World Food Program (WFP), the European Union (EU), governmental agencies and non-profit organizations.
According to the report, two-thirds of the people in those crisis levels were in 10 countries — Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, northern Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Haiti. The 133,000 facing starvation, death and destitution were in Burkina Faso, South Sudan and Yemen.
Since the first such report was issued in 2017, acute food insecurity has been on a constant rise.
Specific key factors were behind the levels seen last year, namely conflicts, economic shocks, and extreme weather conditions, the FAO explained in a joint statement with WFP and EU.
Wars represented the “main driver pushing almost 100 million people in acute food insecurity in 2020”, up from 77 million in the previous year.
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In the second place came economic crises, which were “due to Covid-19” last year and replaced weather hazards as the second pulling factor, with more than 40 million people affected against 24 million in 2019.
The adverse weather events ranked third, which last year threatened over 15 million people, down from 34 million in 2019.
