Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries suffered from acute hunger in 2023, with war-torn Gaza as the territory with the largest number of people facing famine, according to the Global Report on Food Crises released Wednesday.
The United Nations report said 24 million more people faced an acute lack of food than in 2022, due to the sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. The number of nations with food crises that are monitored has also been expanded.
Maximo Torero, chief economist for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said 705,000 people in five countries are at Phase 5, the highest level, on a scale of hunger determined by international experts — the highest number since the global report began in 2016 and quadruple the number that year.
Over 80 per cent of those facing imminent famine — 577,000 people — were in Gaza, he said. South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali each host many thousands also facing catastrophic hunger.
WATCH l Children bearing brunt of conditions in Gaza:
Dr. Bilal Al-Shafi’i, who works in Rafah in southern Gaza, says children are arriving at hospital ‘like a corpse’ as they face severe dehydration and malnutrition. Warning: This video contains scenes of malnourished children.
According to the report’s future outlook, around 1.1 million people in Gaza, where the Israel-Hamas war is now in its seventh month, and 79,000 in South Sudan are projected to be in Phase 5 and facing famine by July.
The United Nations has long complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza in the six months since Israel began an aerial and ground offensive against Gaza’s ruling Islamist militant group Hamas. Israel has denied hindering supplies of humanitarian aid and blames aid agencies for inefficiencies in distribution.
While aid deliveries have increased somewhat in recent weeks, the U.S. and other allies have been carrying out airdrops while planning for the construction of a temporary pier for aid shipments from the sea. According to a report this week in Stars and Stripes, an independent media outlet reporting on the U.S. military, construction has yet to begin several weeks after President Joe Biden publicly announced the plan.
The report also said conflict will also continue to drive food insecurity in Haiti, where gangs control large portions of the capital.
Additionally, while the El Niño phenomenon peaked in early 2024, “its full impact on food security — including flooding and poor rain in parts of east Africa and drought in southern Africa, especially Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe” are likely to manifest throughout the year.
UN Secretary General António Guterres called the report “a roll call of human failings,” and that “in a world of plenty, children are starving to death.”
“The conflicts erupting over the past 12 months compound a dire global situation,” he wrote in the report’s foreword.
Sobering trend since pandemic outbreak
According to the report, over 36 million people in 39 countries and territories are facing an acute hunger emergency, a step below the famine level in Phase 4, with more than a third in Sudan and Afghanistan. It’s an increase of a million people from 2022, the report said.
Arif Husain, the UN World Food Program’s chief economist, said every year since 2016 the numbers of people acutely food insecure have gone up, and they are now more than double the numbers before the COVID-19 pandemic.
WATCH l Urgent pleas from UN, others to help Sudanese:
After nearly a year of civil war, the UN says the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has become one of the worst in recent history. More than 10 million people have been displaced, famine is looming and there is inadequate international aid.
While the report looks at 59 countries, he said the target is to get data from 73 countries where there are people who are acutely food insecure.
Guterres called for an urgent response to the report’s findings that addresses the underlying causes of acute hunger and malnutrition while transforming the systems that supply food. Funding is also not keeping pace with the needs, he stressed.
“We must have the funding, and we also must have the access,” WFP’s Husain said, stressing that both “go hand-in-hand” and are essential to tackle acute food insecurity.
The report is the flagship publication of the Food Security Information Network and is based on a collaboration of 16 partners including UN agencies, regional and multinational bodies, the European Union, the U.S. Agency for International Development, technical organizations and others.
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