The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have jointly released a report titled “Hunger Hotspots: FAO–WFP Early Warnings on Acute Food Insecurity”.
This report stresses the imperative to act to prevent people starving and to save lives in places where food insecurity is set to deteriorate largely due to on-going conflict and rising food prices and a changing climate. It has noted 22 nations and areas as hunger hotspots, where severe food insecurity ‘short-term’ rates are expected to worsen. These are Sudan, Palestine, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali that form the first category of hotspots, given the disaster level of food insecurity. Other nations including Chad, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen are also considered as very high risk. Added to the list since May 2024 are Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia and Niger leaving the list Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Somalia, Zambia and Zimbabwe on the list.
The report has outlined several factors describing the acute food insecurity in the said regions. There has been an evidence of wars as conflict escalation, especially in the Middle East, causing insecurity of food supply. Various factors including insecurity of the resources contributed by the global financial crisis have worsened the food system and food distribution. Further, climate shocks—the least-Favorable La Niña—are projected to worsen world climates through March 2025, straining already weakened food systems in vulnerable areas.
La Niña refers to a natural climate phenomenon that refers to cooler-Than-Normal sea Surface temperatures in the Central and portion of the Southern Pacific. Such disasters produce a threat to food security since they hinder production of crops through effects on climate and water resources. On the other hand, La Niña situation also causes terrible floods in other parts of the world making it hard to deliver food and make it available to the people.
Spearing directly into action, the FAO and the WFP are urging donors and governments worldwide to help save lives now for yet more people to die of hunger-related diseases. There is an important need to scale up funding for food and livelihood assistance, and to work to overcome severe access challenges and current fighting. First of all, the report also addresses the need for regaining access to foods with very high nutrition value and giving a boost to local food production. Long-term stability becomes necessary as the precondition for sustainable farming and food production as well as to secure food resources.
Key highlights
The joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), predicts the current state of food insecurity in many parts of the world from November 2024 through to May 2025. Here are the main highlights:
Identifying Hunger Hotspots
The 22 countries and territories labelled at the highest level of hungry are discussed in the report. The countries have been classified into different categories based on the severity and urgency of the food crisis:
Highest Priority Areas:
- Sudan: Long-lasting conflict leaves the region even in terrible state than before with unheard of ratings of food insecurity.
- Palestine: On-going political crisis and economic challenges have caused devastating food deficit.
- South Sudan: Political instability and climatic hardships have added to the crisis meaning millions are on the edge of starvation.
- Haiti: Food insecurity is unstable mainly because of economic turmoil and natural disasters.
- Mali: Increase in force and compactness are such key factors contributing to the severe food shortage.
Very High Concern: Chad, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Syria, Yemen: These countries are experiencing significant food deficits owing to conflict, economic conditions and climatic shocks.
Newly Added Hotspots: Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia and Niger: These countries have of recent joined the list of hot spots due to heightening food insecurity challenges.
Continuing Hotspots: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Somalia, Zambia, Zimbabwe: These remain in the hotspots list as the countries still face many issues in addressing food security.
Principal Causes of Hunger
The report identifies several key factors driving the escalating food insecurity in these regions:
- Conflict and Political Instability: Natural factors such as droughts, floods and diseases also played significant role in food insecurity but political factors such as, political instabilities and conflicts, prolonged fights have high importance as causes of food insecurity. Disruption in agriculture practices, destruction of infrastructure services and displacement of people leads to decrease in food production and availability.
- Economic Instability: Fluctuating food prices due to business cyclicality and inflation and buying power have affected food intake negatively. These problems intensified because of the mild economic crisis in the world, and many groups of the population have insufficient money to buy food.
- Climate Shocks: More evidently, the effects caused climate change and variability such as droughts, floods and their more recent manifestation have led to reduced productivity in agriculture. These climatic challenges are set to be aggravated by the La Niña weather pattern, which extends to March 2025.
- Impact of La Niña: This report focuses on the effects of La Niña to the food security especially in climatically affected areas. La Niña often causes somewhat lower-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the central and particularly eastern Pacific, as well as droughts and floods in different locations. Among the East African countries, which are prone to adverse effects of climate change are Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and these countries are still likely to be worst affected by drought in future. On the other hand, environmental hazards such as flood may lead to lost crops, and displacement of persons within a particular geographical area.
Urgent Humanitarian Action and recommendations
The FAO and WFP urge the international community for quick and concerted efforts to avert the getting worsen food insecurity. Key recommendations include:
1. More Funds and Requisite Resources Commitment
One of the main proposals is the activation of enhanced funding for food and livelihoods programming. Emergency response plans require early cash outlay to increase their effectiveness and reach the right people who need assistance. This entails offering food, global cash, and seeds to farmers in order to feed the families during difficult times. Other developmental partners, international and national non-governmental organizations and governments are encouraged to fund food security interventions to avert famine and to save lives.
2. Enhancing Humanitarian Assistance
Extreme access barriers represent a major challenge in areas characterized by conflict and political upheavals and where humanitarian delivery is considerably constrained. The report specially emphasizes the necessity to remove these barriers through achieving humanitarian access with all warring factions. This entails negotiating with government and non-state players, and international organizations to win protection for humanitarian personnel and products. Enhancing the physical characteristics infrastructure like transport and communication or storage and warehouse or any other relevant structures is also very important to support distribution channels of aid.
3. Improving the Participation of Early Alerting Programs
According to this report, there is a need to improve early warning for a long-term response to crises affecting food security. Such systems comprise the gathering and evaluation of information on weather trends, crop status, market prices, and conflict circumstances. When early warning systems are effective in the presentation of information, governments can prevent certain dangers or effects by intervening early enough and humanitarian agencies aid in responding to the arising dangers. It involves stocking food and launching cash transfer and community-based resilience activities.
4. Increasing Agriculture Resilience and Sustainability
There is, therefore, need to build more sustainable food security foundations through improving agricultural production. The idea put forward in the report is to intervene in farming by ensuring that food production is climate resilient and would improve on production in case of harsh conditions. This comprises the support for development of crops that can withstand periods of low rainfall, the enhancement of irrigation practices and soil and water conservation practices. Another thing is also teaching and providing credit and markets for smallholder producers is also crucial for robust food systems.
5. Tackling the Causes of Poor Access to Food
Economic factors are one of the most contributing factors to food insecurity. There are recommendations for how to stabilize the economies and safety of people where this crisis is affecting. This involves coordination of economic assistance to households through networks of social protection including cash, foods, and works. Also, measures aimed at preserving markets and intervening against inflation is also necessary to optimize the accessibility of basic foods by vulnerable groups.
6. Peace and conflict resolution
A clear illustration reveals that conflict continues to be a driving factor of sharp increases in acute food insecurity. The need to call for peace and conflicts in reference to food security is also underlined by the report. This entails providing backup to dialog and mediation processes, building governance institutions and fostering cohesiveness.
7. Promoting Nutritional Sensitivity Interventions
Hunger is severe where there is food insecurity because nutrition deficiency is a major problem for people in these areas. Some of the areas that the report suggests should be considered as important include nutrition sensitive interventions as a way of combating malnutrition. This encompasses such segment as fortification of foods, funding for maternal and child nutrition interventions and encouragement of dietary diversity through knowledge enhancement and sensitization. Enhancing Links with Health Systems to deliver Nutrition and other Healthcare Services is also a key approach to better health.
8. Enhancing the local capacities and establishing partnerships
In addressing the food security issue sustainably, focus should be on developing the required capabilities and, collaboration. Based on the observations of the report, some recommendations include increasing capacity to target and support CBOs and local institutions in order to scale up intervention. Collaborative efforts between governments, NGOs, the private sector, and local communities are essential to creating inclusive and effective food security interventions. The activities within capacity-building should therefore be oriented in training, technical assistance, knowledge and technology.