UN agency
345 million people are suffering from acute hunger worldwide
A malnourished five-month-old child in South Sudan. Photo: Sam Mednick/AP/dpa
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World famine is getting worse. The UN currently counts 345 million starving people, with 200 million more because of Corona and the Ukraine war alone.
The corona pandemic and the war in Ukraine have exacerbated the global hunger crisis in an extreme way. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) currently counts 345 million people in 82 countries suffering from acute hunger.
That is over 200 million more than before the outbreak of the corona virus, when the aid organization counted 135 million hungry people in 53 countries. The number has more than doubled in just over two years, as reported.
The UN authority sounds the alarm. “The danger is very real that the world’s food and nutrition needs will soon exceed the capacity of WFP – or any other organization,” says the latest WFP report. According to experts, the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War is imminent.
After many of the poorest countries were already severely affected by the effects of climate change and then the Covid 19 pandemic, and in some cases are still being affected, the war in Ukraine is now added. Because of the Russian attack, the blockade of the Black Sea ports and the enormous rise in grain prices on the world market, many countries in Africa, for example, cannot be supplied with foodstuffs such as wheat as planned.
Germany wants to provide more money
“We are heading for one of the biggest hunger crises in recent decades and must do everything possible to avoid as much as possible,” said Federal Development Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) of the German Press Agency in Rome. She traveled to the Italian capital to attend the opening of the WFP Executive Board’s annual meeting. There she campaigned for more help.
Schulze announced that she intends to reach and, if possible, exceed the German contribution to the WFP from the previous year of 1.2 billion euros this year. The core amount of her ministry alone will be increased from 28 to 70 million euros, she promised.
At the same time, the minister called on others to make more financial commitments – especially since the WFP still lacks half of the required budget. If you want to effectively support poorer countries so that they can be better self-sufficient in the future and become more independent, for example from grain from Russia, “then you just need money,” said Schulze. “Germany is one of the biggest donors and we can justifiably demand that others do more.”
Schulze campaigned for the Alliance for Global Food Security, launched by Germany and the World Bank in May to help with political coordination in the fight against global hunger. An international conference organized by three German ministries is scheduled for Friday in Berlin.