The threat of “COVID famines” and widespread extreme hunger are setting off every alarm bell within the international community, but so far sluggish funding of the UN's appeal is hampering humanitarian agencies’ efforts to deliver urgent assistance to people in need.

People seeking safety are trapped at borders across Eastern Africa due to COVID-19 measures.

Oxfam warned today that millions of people in East and Central Africa, already suffering due to flooding and the impact of coronavirus, are at risk of increased hunger and poverty as the region braces for the latest generation of locusts which are due to hatch in June ―just when crops are to be harvested.

Oxfam together with over 100 NGOs, activists and academics, raises the alarm as remittances to Somalia drop precipitously amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Oxfam is preparing for a potential response as swarms of locusts sweep across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia and are likely to grow 500 times bigger by June to neighboring Uganda and South Sudan. The plagues are hitting the East African region where food insecurity has already reached record levels.

More than 52 million people in 18 countries across southern, eastern and central Africa are facing up to crisis levels of hunger as a result of weather extremes, compounded by poverty and conflict.

Leaders must heed climate strikes and give vulnerable people the tools to survive.

More than 15 million people are in need of aid as drought hits parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia again.

Over 380,000 children under five are at risk of dying from a lethal combination of severe hunger and deadly diseases becuase of acute malnutrition.

Oxfam is calling for immediate humanitarian and political action as the world stands on the brink of an unprecedented four famines.