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More than 335,000 people continue to go hungry in the Lake Region of Chad – a place where only ten doctors are currently working and the international community has only funded $40m of a $121m humanitarian appeal.

In reaction to FAO’s new “State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2022” report, stating that as many as 828 million people were hungry in 2021, an increase of 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam Food Policy Lead said: “It is deeply concerning that global hunger has been spiralling since 2019 and is now at such devastating levels around the world. This is happening not because of a shortage of food but rather as a consequence of a broken food system further undermined by conflicts, the effects of the COVID pandemic and worsening climate change. 

Given the rapid expansion and recurrence of the food crises in West Africa and the inadequate responses of policy makers and other actors, Oxfam and Bilital Maroobe say it is necessary to rethink the strategies to implement in order to respond to these recurring disasters.

Emirati director and Oxfam supporter Ali F. Mostafa has swapped the high-wire drama of his highly successful City of Life and Classified films for a new short video looking at one of the most pressing humanitarian challenges in the world today.

Musician Baaba Maal visited Mauritania where a food crisis now affects one in four people across the country. Oxfam is calling for urgent interventions to avoid the worst over the coming months, as well as long-term investments to strengthen the resilience of populations.

One in five people (282m) is now under-nourished and 93 million in 36 African countries are suffering extreme levels of hunger. Women and children are hit hardest. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one in three children under five is stunted by chronic undernutrition while two out of five women of childbearing age is anemic because of poor diets.

In 2010, more than 10 million people have been affected by the food crisis in the Sahel.

International aid agency Oxfam and leading West African farmers network ROPPA today welcomed an initial forecast of an improved harvest in the Sahel region but warned governments and the UN that the food crisis is far from over.

A year on since the UN warned of “famines of biblical proportions”, rich donors have funded just 5 percent of the UN’s $7.8bn food security appeal for 2021. More than 200 NGOs published an open letter today calling upon all governments to urgently increase aid to stop over 34 million people, from being pushed to the brink of starvation this year.

G7 leaders meeting in Taormina, Sicily, this week should take the lead in fighting famine and immediately fund nearly half of the UN’s urgent appeal to avoid catastrophic hunger and more deaths.