Sat, Sep 16, 2023 page5

• More than 700m people going hungry, UN says

  • AP, UNITED NATIONS
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  A global hunger crisis has left more than 700 million people not knowing when or if they will eat again, and demand for food is rising relentlessly while humanitarian funding is drying up, World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain said on Thursday

  Because of the lack of funding, the UN agency has been forced to cut food rations for millions of people and “more cuts are on the way,” McCain told the UN Security Council in New York.

  “We are now living with a series of concurrent and long-term crises that will continue to fuel global humanitarian needs,” she said. “This is the humanitarian community’s new reality — our new normal — and we will be dealing with the fallout for years to come.”

  

  U.S. Ambassador Cindy McCain, wife of former Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, smiles as she arrives for the public ceremonial inauguration of Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs at the state Capitol in Phoenix, Jan. 5, 2023. A global hunger crisis has left more than 700 million people not knowing when or if they will eat again, and demand for food is rising relentlessly while humanitarian funding is drying up, the head of the United Nations food agency said Thursday, Sept. 14.

  Photo: AP

  The agency estimates that nearly 47 million people in more than 50 countries are just one step from famine, while 45 million children under the age of five are now estimated be facing acute malnutrition, McCain said.

  According to World Food Programme estimates from 79 countries where the Rome-based agency operates, up to 783 million people — one in 10 of the world’s population — still go to bed hungry every night.

  More than 345 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity this year, an increase of almost 200 million people from early 2021 before the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency said.

  At the root of the soaring numbers is “a deadly combination of conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes and soaring fertilizer prices,” the World Food Programme said.

  The economic fallout from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have pushed food prices out of the reach of millions of people across the world at the same time that high fertilizer prices have caused falling production of maize, rice, soybeans and wheat, the agency said.

  “Our collective challenge is to ramp up the ambitious, multi-sectoral partnerships that will enable us to tackle hunger and poverty effectively, and reduce humanitarian needs over the long-term,” McCain said.

  The aim is not just financing, but also finding innovative solutions.

  Mastercard chief executive officer Michael Miebach told the council that “humanitarian relief has long been the domain of government” and development institutions, and the private sector was seen as a source of financial donations for supplies.

  “Money is still important, but companies can offer so much more,” Miebach said. “The private sector stands ready to tackle the challenges at hand in partnership with the public sector.”

  “Business cannot succeed in a failing world” and humanitarian crises impact fellow citizens of the world, he said.

  A business can use its expertise to improve infrastructure, “innovate new approaches and deliver solutions at scale” to improve humanitarian operations, he said.

  Goldman Sachs president of global affairs Jared Cohen told the council that the revenue of many multinational companies rivals the GDP of some of the G20 countries with the largest economies.

  Five American companies and many of their global counterparts have more than 500,000 workers — more than the population of up to 20 UN member nations, Cohen said.

  “Today’s global firms have responsibilities to our shareholders, clients, staff, communities and the rules-based international order that makes it possible for us to do business,” he said.

  Cohen said businesses can fulfill those responsibilities during crises first by not scrambling “to reinvent the wheel every time,” but by drawing on institutional memory and partnering with other firms and the public sector.

  Businesses also need “to act with speed and innovate in real time,” use local connections and bring their expertise to the humanitarian response, he added.
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