The head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning World Food Program has stated that the famine in Somalia has been slowed but not averted.
Executive Director of World Food Program, David Beasley noted that support from donors like the United States and Germany have allowed the organization to postpone, though not entirely avert, the famine in Somalia.
However, Beasley stressed that “we’re not out of this yet.”
Somalia, the nation of proud pastoralists that has survived generations of drought now stumbles amid several global crises.
David Beasley disclosed that countries in the Horn of Africa have faced “unprecedented climate impact” from years of drought, and the U.N. agency had been expecting to announce famine in Somalia before donors “stepped up in magnificent ways.”
“And we’ve been able to — I don’t know if the right word is ‘avert’ famine but we definitely have postponed it,” Beasley informed reporters at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
“We’ve been fortunate so far, given the climate shocks inside Somalia but we’re not out of this yet,” Beasley added.
However, the Executive Director cautioned that “we still could end up with a famine technically in Somalia” because “famine-like conditions” already exist.
“Once you officially declare to be a famine, well, it’s too late,” Beasley emphasized.
Famine is the extreme lack of food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases like cholera.
A formal famine declaration means data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30% of children are acutely malnourished and over two people out of 10,000 are dying every day.
Beasley, who has announced plans to step down in April, has utilized his political experience as a former Republican Governor of the U.S. state of South Carolina to gain greater funding for the World Food Program from Washington under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
The United States announced $411 million in additional funding for Somalia’s crisis last month after a report by the United Nations and other experts said more than 8 million Somalis are badly food insecure because of drought and high food prices.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) announced that global prices for food commodities like grain and vegetable oils were the highest on record last year even after falling for nine months in a row.
Russia’s War In Ukraine, Drought Account For Worldwide Hunger
The FAO added that Russia’s war in Ukraine, drought and other factors account for the increased inflation and worsened hunger worldwide. Thousands have died in Somalia.
When Beasley became the Executive Director of World Food Program in 2017, about 80 million people worldwide were on the brink of starvation and faced chronic hunger.
Conflict, climate change and COVID-19 have caused that to surge to 350 million today because of economic devastation and supply-chain disruptions.
“You think you can’t get any worse. Then the breadbasket of the world is shut down: Ukraine,” Beasley said. “Now (the country has) the longest bread lines in the world,” referring to Russia’s war that has toppled food production and exports from Ukraine.
Ukrainian farmers have been forced to neglect their fields as millions flee, fight or try to stay alive. Ports that send wheat and other food staples worldwide to be made into bread, noodles and animal feed have been shut down.
Russia and Ukraine combine for nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports. Ukraine also is a major supplier of corn and the global leader in sunflower oil, used in food processing.
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