ROME: The number of people suffering from very serious food shortages, including famine, increased markedly last year, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday. In 2017, there were 124 million food-insecure people in need of urgent assistance in 51 countries, up from 108 million people across 48 countries in 2016, the FAO said after publishing the Global Report on Food Crises, in conjunction with other international agencies.
The report found that “the worst food crises in 2017 were in north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and South Sudan, where nearly 32 million people were food-insecure and in need of urgent assistance.”
In South Sudan, the UN had declared a famine in parts of the northern Unity region from February to June 2017. It was the first time it happened worldwide since 2011, and the crisis abated thanks to an increase in humanitarian aid.
For 2018, “Yemen will continue to be the largest food crisis by far. The situation is expected to deteriorate, particularly because of restricted access, economic collapse and outbreaks of disease,” Thursday’s report added.
Other areas of concern for this year include Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, north-eastern Nigeria, the Lake Chad region, South Sudan, Syria, Libya and the central Sahel.
In September, in a report covering a wider definition of undernourishment, FAO and other UN agencies said world hunger had increased for the first time in more than a decade, with 815 million people going hungry in 2016, up from 777 million in 2015. — dpa
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