258 million people faced acute food insecurity in 2022

More than a quarter-billion people in 58 countries faced acute food insecurity last year due to conflicts, climate change, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to a report published Wednesday.

The Global Report on food Crises, an alliance of humanitarian organizations founded by the U.N. and European Union, said people faced starvation and death in seven of those countries: Somalia, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

A “stinging indictment of humanity’s failure” to carry out U.N. goals to end world hunger, according to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is the report’s finding that the number of people experiencing acute food insecurity and needing urgent food aid, or 258 million, has increased for the fourth year in a row.

While the survey revealed that the severity of the issue grew as well, “highlighting a concerning trend of a deterioration,” the increase from the previous year was partially attributable to more populations being evaluated.

According to Rein Paulsen, director of emergencies and resilience for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are multiple factors contributing to hunger. They include wars, climatic changes, the pandemic’s effects, and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has affected the world market for fertilizers, wheat, maize, and sunflower oil.

The poorest nations that depend on food imports have been most severely impacted. Prices have risen, and those nations have suffered as a result, according to Paulsen.

He urged a “paradigm shift” in which more money is invested in agricultural treatments that foresee and seek to prevent food crises.

The imbalance, or mismatch, between the amount of cash that is given, what that funding is used for, and the kinds of interventions needed to bring about a change, he added, is the difficulty that we face.

A person experiences acute food insecurity when their capacity to eat enough food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate threat.