hunger crisis

Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots – those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events – have suffered a 123% rise in acute hunger over just the past six years, according to an Oxfam report published today.

In reaction to FAO’s new “State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2022” report, stating that as many as 828 million people were hungry in 2021, an increase of 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam Food Policy Lead said: “It is deeply concerning that global hunger has been spiralling since 2019 and is now at such devastating levels around the world. This is happening not because of a shortage of food but rather as a consequence of a broken food system further undermined by conflicts, the effects of the COVID pandemic and worsening climate change. 

The G7 must pursue windfall taxes on excess corporate profits including from those making huge returns from surging food and energy prices. The revenues can be used to fund an end to global hunger and to tackle climate change, says Oxfam.

In reaction to today’s "Global Report on Food Crises” which says that more than 193 million people across 53 countries are experiencing acute hunger and require urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance, Oxfam Global Food Security and Livelihoods expert, Emily Farr, said: “It is deeply concerning to find extreme hunger increasing to a magnitude never seen before. 40 million more people have been pushed to extreme hunger, nearly a 25% surge since last year, and 80% since 2016."

As donors convene in Geneva, Oxfam and over 50 NGOs call for an urgent and substantial step-up in funding and leadership to respond to the humanitarian catastrophe facing millions in the Horn of Africa due to the severe drought, warning that further delays will cost lives.  

Responding to the IPC report published over the weekend with alarming figures of around 7.74 million people in South Sudan likely to experience high levels of acute food insecurity between April and July 2022, Oxfam Lead in South Sudan, Juliet Moriku Balikowa said: “These latest figures just reiterate the desperate situation many people in South Sudan are facing. The number of people classified in areas of catastrophic hunger is alarming."

As many as 28 million people across East Africa face severe hunger if the March rains fail. With the unfolding crisis in Ukraine taking their attention, there is a real danger that the international community will not respond adequately to the escalating hunger crisis in East Africa until it is too late, Oxfam warned today. 

One in five people (282m) is now under-nourished and 93 million in 36 African countries are suffering extreme levels of hunger. Women and children are hit hardest. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one in three children under five is stunted by chronic undernutrition while two out of five women of childbearing age is anemic because of poor diets.

One year since conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, almost seven million people in Tigray and in neighboring Amhara and Afar are suffering from the toll of violence, human rights abuses, hunger, locusts, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ahead of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam calls on G20 leaders to take urgent action to dramatically scale up manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, promote a fair economic recovery, fight hunger, lower dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, and help the poorest countries adapt to the climate change already happening.