10 countries are home to two-thirds of world's most hungry: UN-backed report

Two-thirds of people facing food crises globally last year lived in just 10 countries, with a third of them in Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN-backed yearly report said Friday.

Conflict remained the main driver of acute food insecurity, according to the Global Report on Food Crises, based on data from the United Nations, the European Union and humanitarian agencies.

And with conflicts and climate extremes "likely to sustain or worsen conditions in many countries", the outlook for 2026 is "bleak", it said.

"Acute food insecurity remains highly concentrated (in) 10 countries -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen," the report said.

Improvements in some countries, such as Bangladesh and Syria, were "almost fully offset by notable deteriorations" in Afghanistan, DRC, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, it said.

For the first time in the report, which is in its 10th edition, famine was confirmed in two separate contexts -- in Gaza and parts of Sudan -- in the same year.

Around 266 million people in 47 countries or territories experienced high levels of acute food insecurity last year, nearly double the share recorded in 2016, the report said.
It also warned about the sharp decline in international aid and said the Middle East war risked aggravating existing crises by increasing the numbers of displaced in a region already hosting millions of refugees, and driving up fertiliser costs.

The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil supply route, has sent fertiliser prices soaring since they rely on oil-based inputs.

"Now we're in planting season," Alvaro Lario, head of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), told AFP.

"So for sure this current food shock -- both with the energy prices going up and also fertilisers going up -- I think it's going to have a massive impact in terms of production," Lario said.

He called for more help to small-scale farmers, for example by investing in water- and climate-resilient crops.

Crises could be eased by farmers producing fertiliser locally as well as improving soil health so that less of it is needed, he added.

IFAD is also working on boosting investment by local private sectors.

"Creating the instruments and incentives for the local private sector... is a very important way of making that sustainability and that development money go a longer way," Lario said. 

AFP

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