The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday that the world is “on the brink of a hunger pandemic,” due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The WFP added that the virus has sparked “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two.”
WFP Executive Director David Beasley has told the UN Security Council that there are 135 million people already facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. This is coupled with an additional 130 million people worldwide who are on the edge of starvation prompted by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
During the video briefing, Beasley said that the WFP is providing food to nearly 100 million people on any given day. This figure includes “about 30 million people who literally depend on us to stay alive”.
Beasley added that if the WFP cannot reach those who need the life-saving assistance, “our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period”.
He added that this analysis does not include increased starvation due to the coronavirus, which has caused further hardships for people.
“In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen [36] countries, and in fact, in 10 of these countries, we already have more than one million people per country who are on the verge of starvation,” he said.
The countries that, in 2019, had the worst food crises were identified by the WFP as Yemen, the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria and Haiti.
Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), announced that Yemen currently has the worst food and malnutrition crisis of anywhere in the world. Qu said that the number of acutely food-insecure people there is “expected to exceed 17 million.”
Qu also said that the newly released 2020 Global Report on Food Crises clearly links conflict and rising levels of acute food insecurity. He drew a connection between livelihood interventions and peace processes, asserting that “coherent actions are needed among humanitarian, development and peace actors to address the root causes of acute food insecurity”.
Earlier this month, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned of the ‘devastating’ consequences on global labour markets due to the coronavirus pandemic. The ILO explained that the lockdown measures that have been put into effect across the world are affecting around 81% of the global workforce.
The ILO has monitored the coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the world’s labour markets over the past few weeks. Since its first report on 18 March, lockdown measures taken to contain the spread of the virus has affected already around 2.7 billion workers, the organisation estimated.
During the past few weeks, the pandemic has intensified and expanded in its global reach, with huge impacts on public health and unprecedented shocks to economies and labour markets. The total number of infections have reached over 2.5 million patients worldwide, and caused more than 178,000 deaths.
