Taking food from the hungry to feed the starving

©thestar.com

Who would willingly take food from the mouth of a hungry child? It is a question that I never thought I would be asking myself. And yet, in a cruel and gruesome form of humanitarian triage, that is exactly the decision that the World Food Programme (WFP) is facing. As the numbers of hungry people around the world continue to rise, and the resources needed to feed them run low, WFP is being forced into decisions to take food from the hungry, in order to feed the starving.

This is happening in South Sudan, now, and there is nothing to say that it will not soon start happening in other emergency food crises in Yemen, North-East Nigeria, or the Sahel region of West Africa.

It is a life and death choice that no humanitarian would have willingly signed up for, but it is the new reality in 2021, the year when all our worst-case scenarios are coming to pass. If war is the right metaphor for the struggle that we face in feeding the hungry, the brutal reality is that we are already losing the battle in too many places.

At the same time, the front lines in the wider war on hunger are multiplying in Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia and Mozambique. When I look at my colleagues fighting to end hunger in some of the most acute emergencies around the world, all are there because they want to save lives and build a better future for those who have been left furthest behind. But they are being sent to the front lines poorly equipped for the battles they now face.

COVID-19 has been a disruptive game-changer, and it has severely tested all of us. The global spread of the virus and the socio-economic impact of lockdowns have combined with climate shocks and conflict to leave millions living precariously close to the edge. Where once we were able to manage a crisis and move people out of the danger zone, now we are preoccupied with simply minimizing the death toll as famine becomes a clear and present danger in multiple countries.