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Wednesday, September 9th, 2020

UN Warns Pandemic-Intensified Famines Are Looming, ‘Endangering the Lives of Millions’

Author:     Kenny Stancil
Source:     Common Dreams
Publication Date:     Tuesday, September 08, 2020
 Link: UN Warns Pandemic-Intensified Famines Are Looming, ‘Endangering the Lives of Millions’
Stephan:   The negative food trends are not confined to the U.S. Humanity has got to change its fundamental values to recognize that wellbeing must be the primary social value. The alternative, as this report spells out, is a disaster of epic proportions, and climate change is just going to make this worse and worse.
Hashem Mahmoud Atin, a 10-month-old displaced Yemeni child suffering from acute malnutrition and who is unable to reach a hospital for treatment, is held by his mother at a camp in Abs in northern Yemen’s Hajjah province on September 3, 2020. (Photo: Essa Ahmed/AFP/Getty

The convergence of socio-environmental “disasters, economic shocks, and public health crises, all compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic,” has magnified the risks of famine, “endangering the lives of millions” of people living in Yemen, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official warned in a statement obtained by the New York Times over the weekend.  

“It is critical we come together as one united global community to defeat this disease, and protect the most vulnerable nations and communities from its potentially devastating effects.”
David Beasley, World Food Program

In a letter to members of the U.N. Security Council, Mark Lowcock, under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, warned of the looming intensification of malnutrition, starvation, and death in all four areas—encompassing some of the world’s most destitute regions, each one further hampered by years […]

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