Daily Times

UNITED NATIONS: The agencies of United Nations have warned the UN Security Council that ongoing conflicts around the world have pushed more than 56 million people into ‘crisis’ or ’emergency’ levels of food insecurity and are hindering efforts to eradicate malnutrition.

According to a series of 17 country briefs prepared for the Security Council by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UN World Food Programme (WFP), Yemen and Syria are top the list in terms of sheer numbers of people whose food security is being negatively impacted by the ongoing conflict.

“Conflict is a leading cause of hunger, each famine in the modern era has been characterised by conflict,” FAO Director General Jos Graziano da Silva and WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin said in a joint news release.

“It undermines food security in multiple ways: destroying crops, livestock and agricultural infrastructure, disrupting markets, causing displacement, creating fear and uncertainty over fulfilling future needs, damaging human capital and contributing to the spread of disease among others,” they said.

According to the UN agencies, 14 million people, more than half of the population in Yemen is in a state of hunger crisis or emergency. Indeed, 8.7 million people, 37 percent of the pre-conflict population in Syria need urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.

Furthermore, a staggering 89 percent of all Syrian refugees currently in Lebanon also require urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance, whereas in South Sudan, the situation is rapidly deteriorating, as 4.8 million people are in dire need of food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.

Similarly, millions of people are still wrestling with high levels of food insecurity in countries that are coming out of extended periods of civil strife such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and Colombia.

The UN agencies also warned that post-conflict countries with high food insecurity are 40 percent more likely to relapse into conflict within a 10 year time span if hunger levels are not addressed properly.

In other countries, the overall absolute numbers of people facing food insecurity are lower, as the share of people experiencing severe levels of food insecurity accounts for over half of the total population.

At least 23 percent and 19 percent of people are at IPC level 3 or 4, respectively, while in the CAR, 50 percent of the population is at IPC scale 3 or worse.

The IPC scale is an evidence-based approach which allows comparability of situations across the countries and over time. According to the scale, levels 3 and 4 represent crisis and emergency levels, respectively, and level 5, the highest level, indicates the famine. The two UN agencies also pointed out that according to recent estimates, approximately half of the global poor now live in states characterised by conflict and violence.

The people, in such places, can be up to three times more likely to be undernourished than those living in more stable areas.

Graziano da Silva emphasised that addressing hunger can be a meaningful contribution to peace building adding that the 2030 agenda for sustainable development recognises peace as a vital threshold condition for development, as well as, a development outcome in its own right.”

The briefs shared with the Security Council cover almost 17 countries where conflict has significantly affected the issue of food security, which includes Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Colombia, C d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Guinea Bissau, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

An additional brief on the regional Lake Chad crisis affecting Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon was also submitted. Therefore, violence associated with Boko Haram has seen the increased numbers of displaced people over the past two years accompanied by rising levels of hunger and malnutrition.