hunger crisis

Oxfam water engineers are having to drill deeper, more expensive and harder-to-maintain water boreholes used by some of the poorest communities around the world, more often now only to find dry, depleted or polluted reservoirs. 

Today, EU leaders met in Brussels to discuss the implications of the Ukraine war on food security. In response, Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam EU food expert said:  “EU leaders must learn from this moment. Only by taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, can they avoid copy-pasting the same policies which led to the food price crisis of 2007-2008, and which have led to the one the world faces today.  

Nearly two out of every five families in Yemen buy food and medicines using debt, according to Oxfam research published today. 

As global greenhouse emissions continue to rise, and climate change wreaks more havoc upon the people and places least responsible for the problem, rich polluting countries are now three years overdue on their promise to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries.

Oxfam is deeply disappointed by today’s donors’ dismally inadequate pledges to East Africa’s crisis; a protracted crisis which continues to be woefully underfunded.

As the international community gathers in New York this week for the Horn of Africa High Level Pledging Conference, we urge global donors to address the impact of the climate injustice taking place in the region by making the financial pledges required to fully fund the humanitarian response and help address immediate and long-term needs across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, where millions of people are trapped in a devastating cycle of hunger and displacement.

In reaction to the GRFC 2023, Oxfam Global Food and Economic Security Lead, Emily Farr, said:  “For global hunger to rise for a fifth consecutive year in a world of plenty is a stain on our collective humanity. Decades of progress made to end poverty and hunger are being fast-reversed by conflict, economic shocks, and climate change.  

Renewed violent clashes involving non-state armed groups have exacerbated the hunger and
protection crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo, leaving 10 million people in urgent
need of humanitarian assistance, warned Oxfam, CARE International and the Danish Refugee
Council today.

Over 60 activists, social movements, and women food producers that have gathered in Maputo,
Mozambique for Women Food Convening 2023 conference say that the current global food
system is exploitative, broken, unjust, marginalises women and exacerbates gender inequalities
and hunger particularly in low-income countries.

Up to 90% of water boreholes in parts of Somalia, Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia have entirely dried up.