UN News Today 31 October 2024 |

‘Catastrophic’ hunger persists in multiple countries, warn food agencies

“Catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity” bordering on starvation are expected to impact hundreds of thousands of people in coming months, driven principally by violence and conflict, UN agencies said on Thursday.

Five hunger hotspots are of particular concern: Haiti, Mali, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), South Sudan and Sudan.

“Without immediate humanitarian action and concerted efforts to overcome severe access constraints and resolve ongoing conflicts, further starvation and death are likely,” across these five hunger hotspots, said the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

The agencies warned in a new report that famine has already been declared in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp in Sudan, while other areas of the war-torn country remain at risk of famine.

In Gaza, the UN agencies point to the “enduring risk of famine” there, linked to the lack of aid access following the outbreak of war more than a year ago, along with chronic life-threatening hunger in Haiti, Mali and South Sudan.

In all, 22 countries are now designated “hunger hotspots”; all of them are expected to see “increase in magnitude and severity” of food insecurity because of conflict, economic crisis and climate shocks. Four new countries have been added to the list since June: Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, and Niger.

Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director, said that it was “time for world leaders to step up and work with us to reach the millions of people at risk of starvation”. She called for “diplomatic solutions to conflicts” and for humanitarians to be given the guarantees they needed to work safely – but also to mobilize “resources and partnerships…to halt global hunger in its tracks.”

Lebanon: UN aid teams highlight obstacles for pregnant women displaced by war

UN aid teams operating in Lebanon have highlighted the major challenges facing thousands of women preparing to give birth in war-torn areas and called for increased international assistance.

The UN sexual and reproduction services agency, UNFPA, said that there are more than 11,600 pregnant women in Lebanon now.

Many who’ve been displaced and living in shelters for weeks and months have exhausted their savings and are unable to seek vital medical assistance, the agency’s Pamela di Camillo told UN News:

“They have been on the move since, some of them since one year, and they lost the contact with their gynecologist. They don’t have the files with their pregnancy, information with them, so they fear not only for their houses that they left behind in their villages, but also they fear for the baby they have in their bellies, and they also experience spotting early contraction because of  the trauma and and the situation. They are living in hearing intense bombardment over days.”

The UNFPA official noted that the UN agency has been working with Lebanon’s health authorities to identify and help all pregnant women by increasing the number of midwives that receive UN support and distributing dignity kits to women in shelters.

“The response needs to be scaled up everywhere,” said Ms. di Camillo, who warned that the situation remains dangerous for humanitarian workers who struggle to reach all vulnerable women.

Sudan: nearly 120,000 newly displaced by conflict in Al-Jazirah state

Ten days of fighting in central Sudan have uprooted nearly 120,000 people from their homes and shelters, the UN Organization for Migration, IOM, has said.

The humanitarian update comes amid ongoing fierce fighting between forces loyal to General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

Clashes in Al-Jazirah state, in the towns of Sharg A and Um Algura, have forced thousands to flee.

The UN migration agency reported civilian casualties and injuries, although telecommunications outages in Al Jazirah have prevented aid teams from gathering further displacement data.

“The situation remains tense and unpredictable,” IOM said in a statement, after warning earlier this week that the conflict has now displaced more than 11 million people inside Sudan.

More than 3.1 million from Sudan are now refugees beyond the country’s borders and more than 60,000 crossed into Chad this month alone, the UN agency said.

It is now some 17 months since conflict erupted in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rival Rapid Support Forces after a breakdown in the peaceful transfer of power to civilian rule.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.

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