{"id":400554,"date":"2020-09-06T14:08:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T11:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/?p=400554"},"modified":"2020-09-06T14:08:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T11:08:09","slug":"un-chief-warns-of-famine-risk-in-4-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/un-chief-warns-of-famine-risk-in-4-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"UN chief warns of famine risk in 4 countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

United Nations(SONNA<\/strong>)-U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that there is a risk of famine and widespread food insecurity in four countries affected by conflict \u2014 Congo, Yemen, northeast Nigeria and South Sudan \u2014 and the lives of millions of people are in danger.<\/p>\n

In a note to Security Council members obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, the U.N. chief said the four countries rank \u201camong the largest food crises in the world,\u201d according to the 2020 Global Report on Food Crises and recent food security analyses. But funding to help is very low, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAction is needed now,\u201d Guterres said. \u201cHaving endured years of armed conflict and related violence, the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, northeast Nigeria and South Sudan are again facing the specter of heightened food insecurity and potentially famine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.N. chief said key indicators \u201care similarly deteriorating\u201d in a number of other conflict-hit countries including Somalia, Burkina Faso and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation varies from country to country, but civilians are being killed, injured and displaced; livelihoods are destroyed; and availability of and access to food disrupted, amid growing fragility,\u201d Guterres said. \u201cAt the same time, humanitarian operations are attacked, delayed or obstructed from delivering life-saving assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said food insecurity in conflict-affected countries \u201cis now further exacerbated by natural disasters, economic shocks and public health crises, all compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said in an interview with AP that the economic fallout from the pandemic including lock downs, border closures and restrictions on movement have all had \u201ca big effect on food security and agricultural productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

And extremists have taken the opportunity \u201cto make hay out of all this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is very preoccupied by COVID and the virus,\u201d Lowcock said. But \u201cit is not the virus that\u2019s creating most of the carnage. It is other things, and we need to focus on the things that will really cause the biggest loss of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowcock said many of those things are consequences of COVID-19 __ the economic contraction, the declining availability of basic public services, \u201cthe insecurity into which extremist groups are occupying themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said a lot of effort has gone into things like providing personal protective equipment, public information campaigns on the virus, water and sanitation campaigns, \u201call of which are good things.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cBut if you do those at the expense of basic humanitarian needs in these badly affected places, what you end up with is not a reduction in loss of life but an increase in loss of life,\u201d Lowcock said.<\/p>\n

He said having four countries meet the requirement in a 2018 Security Council resolution to report to the council when the risk of conflict-induced famine and widespread food insecurity occurs is highly significant.<\/p>\n

According to the secretary-general\u2019s note, escalating violence in volatile eastern Congo \u201cis again driving disastrous levels of food insecurity and hunger,\u201d and the latest analysis \u201cindicates that over 21 million people are in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n

With only 22% of the U.N. humanitarian appeal currently funded, Guterres said, \u201ccore programs will need to be reduced or suspended.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Yemen, where the international community mobilized to prevent famine two years ago, he said, \u201cthe risk is slowly returning.\u201d Escalating conflict and economic decline brought the Arab world\u2019s poorest nation to the brink of famine two years ago, and similar conditions and worsening key indicators are emerging today, he said.<\/p>\n

A recent survey indicated that 3.2 million people in government-controlled areas are now \u201chighly food insecure,\u201d and food prices are 140% higher than averages before the conflict began in 2015, Guterres said. \u201cBut with only 24% of humanitarian requirements funded in 2020, agencies are now forced to reduce or close core programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In northeast Nigeria\u2019s Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, he said, \u201calarming levels of food insecurity and hunger have arisen largely as a result of the actions\u201d of extremists affiliated with armed groups.<\/p>\n

Guterres said estimates suggest more than 10 million people in the three states \u2014 about 80% of the population \u2014 need humanitarian assistance and protection, an almost 50% increase since last year and the highest recorded since humanitarian operations began. Yet, the U.N. appeal is only 33% funded, its lowest level, he said.<\/p>\n

In South Sudan\u2019s Jonglei and Greater Pibor administrative area, Guterres said the situation deteriorated rapidly in the first half of 2020, \u201cfueled by escalating violence and insecurity,\u201d Guterres said.<\/p>\n

Fighting has been accompanied by widespread attacks on agricultural and pastoral land and the looting of livestock and food, leaving more that 1.4 million people in the area \u201cfacing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, he said. In addition, at least 350,000 children suffer from severe or moderate acute malnutrition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guterres said the latest outlook from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network \u201cis flagging worsening catastrophe conditions … in areas affected by the violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowcock said \u201cthere\u2019s a paradox\u201d because overall U.N. humanitarian funding is ahead of 2019, which was a record year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the money is not following the greatest need,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of our appeals are relatively well funded, but some of the places where the problems are worst are poorly funded \u2014 Nigeria, Yemen, Congo, they\u2019re all in that category.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United Nations(SONNA)-U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that there is a risk of famine and widespread food insecurity in four countries affected by conflict \u2014 Congo, Yemen, northeast Nigeria and South Sudan \u2014 and the lives of millions of people are in danger. In a note to Security Council members obtained by The Associated Press on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-400554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400558,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400554\/revisions\/400558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}