More and more people are starving

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Compared to 2021, the number of people classified in the three highest levels of food insecurity has increased from 193 million to 258 million. The EU, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the World Food Program of the United Nations (WFP) announced this on Wednesday.

As in recent years, the report cited conflicts and the economic consequences of Corona and the war in Ukraine as the main reasons for the many food crises. “More than a quarter of a billion people are now acutely hungry, some on the brink of starvation,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in the report’s foreword. “That’s unforgivable.”

“The latest figures on acute global food insecurity paint a very worrying picture,” said Rein Paulsen, FAO director for emergencies and resilience. The 258 million people are about “threatened households whose lives and livelihoods are threatened,” Paulsen points out.

Famines and food crises are measured using what is known as a five-level IPC scale. Acute hunger is level 3. According to the report, about 35 million people were affected by humanitarian emergencies (level 4) in 2022. For some 376,000 people, the experts speak of a famine, the highest level 5 – but the actual number of people affected is probably significantly higher, for example because no data has been forwarded from Ethiopia. It is estimated that by the end of 2021, more than 400,000 people were starving.

(SDA)

Source: Blick