The loss of tourism receipts will damage countries such as Ethiopia, where it accounts for 47% of total exports. The collapsing oil prices in lower-income countries like South Sudan will have an impact significantly, where oil accounts for 98.8% of total exports. And, of course, when donor countries’ revenues are down, how much impact will this have on life saving foreign aid Lockdowns and economic recession are expected to lead to a major loss of income among the working poor. Overseas remittances will also drop sharply - this will hurt countries such as Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia just a name a couple. It is critical we come together as one united global community to defeat this disease, and protect the most vulnerable nations and communities from its potentially devastating effects. This is why I am talking about a hunger pandemic. There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself. Now we have to live up to our pledge to protect the most vulnerable and act immediately to save lives.īut this is only in my opinion only the first part of the strategy needed to protect conflict-riven countries from a hunger pandemic caused by the Coronavirus. It was amazing to see the council come together. In many places, this human suffering is the heavy price of conflict.Īt WFP, we are proud that this Council made the historic decision to pass Resolution 2417 in May 2018. In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries, and in fact, in 10 of these countries we already have more than one million people per country who are on the verge of starvation. This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19. If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period. This includes about 30 million people who literally depend on us to stay alive. On any given day now, WFP offers a lifeline to nearly 100 million people, up from about 80 million just a few years ago. But now the World Food Programme analysis shows that, due to the Coronavirus, an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That means 135 million people on earth are marching towards the brink of starvation. This sounds truly shocking but let me give you the numbers: 821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, chronically hungry, and as the new Global Report on Food Crisis published today shows, there are a further 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility. So today, with COVID-19, I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe. The desert locust swarms in Africa, as Director General Qu highlighted in his remarks. And more frequent natural disasters and changing weather patterns. The economic crisis in Lebanon affecting millions of Syrian refugees. The deepening crises in places like South Sudan and, as Jan Egeland will no doubt set out, Burkina Faso and the Central Sahel region. In my conversations with world leaders over the past many months, before the Coronavirus even became an issue, I was saying that 2020 would be facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II for a number of reasons. At the same time while dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic. NEW YORK – Forgive me for speaking bluntly, but I’d like to lay out for you very clearly what the world is facing at this very moment. Transcript as delivered of remarks by David Beasley, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director to today’s virtual session of the UN Security Council on the Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Protecting Civilians Affected by Conflict-Induced Hunger Democratic Republic of the Congo emergency.We work in 123 countries and territories, combining emergency assistance with long-term development while adapting our activities to the context and challenges of each location and its people.
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