Behind every crisis there is hunger

Nearly one third of the world’s population (2.4 billion) do not have enough to eat. Of those, 35 million people in 39 countries are on the brink of famine. We have not seen a hunger crisis like this in modern times with countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia all affected.

We are seeing a toxic trio of conflict, climate change and the economic impact of covid together fuelling this crisis. Conflicts in places like Sudan, Ukraine and the Middle East have displaced thousands, prevented food getting though and stopped farming and harvesting; climate change is creating damaging droughts and sudden floods that ruin crops; and the covid pandemic brought about lockdowns that have destroyed livelihoods and daily incomes around the world. Tens of millions of people are now eating less nutritious food, less often, and often not at all.

Hungry families do desperate things to survive and this has massive implications for children. First of all hungry families exhaust the minimal savings they may have, and then start to sell off whatever they have to pay for what little – and expensive – food may remain. This means selling off any animals that might still be alive, farm implements, or even their land. If they survive the crisis they are then mired in deeper poverty. Families may also sell off their daughters into early marriage. This means one less mouth to feed and a little income to feed the rest of the family. But girls who end up in this situation suffer abuse, exploitation and are pulled out of school permanently. Their lives are ruined. Other children may be forced to beg, to work in dangerous jobs, or even to join insurgent groups that offer food in return for taking up arms.

In the worst situations whole families and villages may be forced to abandon their homes to trek to cities or displacement camps to find food. The collective impact of these desperate attempts to survive can mark children with long-lasting physical and emotional scars.

There is a technical assessment and process for determining a famine and any announcement of a famine is only made with extreme caution. Naturally governments are very sensitive about a famine being declared.

For a famine to be declared, there must be evidence of these three things:

1. At least two people (or four children) a day dying for every 10,000 population
2. At least 30% of the population is acutely malnourished
3. At least 20% of the population face an extreme lack of food

There is a lesson for us in the last major famine of 2011 when 260,000 people died in Somalia – half of those were children under five. We also know that that famine declaration came too late, with tens of thousands of people dying before the declaration was even made. If we do not respond immediately and urgently tens of thousands of people will die and a huge percentage of those will be children. We must act now, act quickly and act at scale to prevent mass starvation.

If we don’t act now with a global emergency food response we could see tens of thousands of children die and many millions left with long-term health impacts. Children will starve to death without urgent food aid. We also know that poor nutrition in the first 1,000 days of a girl or boy’s life leads to poor brain development, permanent impaired mental functioning and lower IQs. Under-fives are also especially at risk from killer illnesses such as malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia due to their weakened immune systems. Half of the 260,000 people who died in the 2011 Somalia famine were children, aged under 5.