Search results

There is growing scientific analysis suggesting that the impacts of current and recent droughts in East Africa are likely to have been aggravated by climate change. Without global efforts to reduce emissions and to help the world’s poorest people cope with the effects of climate change, this crisis will continue to repeat itself.

A year and a half since the Covid-19 pandemic began, deaths from hunger are outpacing the virus. The worst is still yet to come unless governments urgently tackle food insecurity and its root causes head on. We need action to create fairer, more resilient and sustainable ways of feeding the world.

Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots – those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events – have suffered a 123% rise in acute hunger over just the past six years, according to an Oxfam report published today.

New figures released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show that the number of hungry people has risen for the third year in a row, mainly as a result of conflict and the climate crisis. However, despite the spiralling hunger and two global food price crises in a little over ten years, hunger has fallen off the political agenda.

Over a decade since Somalia experienced a devastating famine that killed over a quarter of a million people, another famine is looming in East Africa. Despite various warnings and alarms over the past two years, we are once again responding too late and with too little to avert the crisis. The humanitarian system must evolve in order to enable and fully fund anticipatory action.

In reaction to today’s "Global Report on Food Crises” which says that more than 193 million people across 53 countries are experiencing acute hunger and require urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance, Oxfam Global Food Security and Livelihoods expert, Emily Farr, said: “It is deeply concerning to find extreme hunger increasing to a magnitude never seen before. 40 million more people have been pushed to extreme hunger, nearly a 25% surge since last year, and 80% since 2016."

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.

As drought devastates the Horn of Africa yet again, the following analysis comparing 2019 to earlier droughts paints a bleak picture and indictment on the humanitarian community. The urgency to better respond is exacerbated by people’s lack of recovery from the 2017 drought and a further deterioration predicted in coming months.

Oxfam calls for a radical shake-up in the way the world deals with food crises in Ethiopia and beyond. The agency rounded on what it called a “knee-jerk reaction” to food crises which is dominated by sending food aid.

In reaction to the outcomes of the Committee on World Food Security meeting which ended yesterday, Thierry Kesteloot, Oxfam’s food policy advisor said: "Oxfam is outraged that the world’s foremost platform on global food security and nutrition has failed to agree on any action close to sufficient in tackling to the world’s COVID-fuelled food crisis.