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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.
When I introduced the world to the concept of a “hunger pandemic” a year ago, I did so because I felt a moral responsibility to raise the alarm about these catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation that threatened to spread in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. All the warning signs were there that COVID-19 would combine to push the numbers of hungry up.WFP’s predictions seemed fantastical at the time: a potential for 300,000 people to die every day over a three-month period, with up to 30 million people living on the edge of starvation, and the possibility of multiple famines. While my words mobilized resources to pull millions back from starvation, we have only really delayed the threat and famine is still lurking in the shadows.It is obscene that in the 21st century at a time when we have more than enough food to feed everyone, people are still dying because they cannot get enough to eat. The way that the humanitarian system is geared means that the best we can do is just to stop people from falling over the edge. But if you live life on the brink you never really escape the risk of falling over, and if we cannot find the focus and the funds to pull people back, the result is going to be yet more starvation, de-stabilisation and migration.Newer articles:
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