World
1News

'Lives will be lost' - aid organisations urge governments to address starvation

A year ago, the United Nations warned the world, “we are going to have famines of biblical proportions in 2021”. Now aid organisations say if urgent action isn’t taken, lives will be lost.

More than 200 organisations, including World Vision, Oxfam and Save the Children, have today published an open letter , calling on governments to divert one day of military spending to help.

“Needs already cannot be met, and we are increasingly likely to face multiple famines if we do not respond now,” they said.

Donors funded just five per cent of what the UN last year said was needed, and World Vision says the $5.5 billion still required is equivalent to less than 26 hours of global military spending.

“Yet, as more and more people go to bed hungry, conflict is increasing,” the organisation said. 

At the end of 2020, the UN estimated 270 million people were either at high risk of, or already facing, acute levels of hunger.

“These people are not starving, they are being starved”, the letter reads.

“These girls and boys, men and women, are being starved by conflict and violence; by inequality; by the impacts of climate change; by the loss of land, jobs or prospects; by a fight against Covid-19 that has left them even further behind”.

Several East African nations are also facing ongoing desert locust infestations, the most intense and aggressive in 70 years.

Last year refugees in Uganda had food rations cut by 30 per cent, and some families have told World Vision they will have to marry their daughters off young.

Others feel they’re best to return to the conflict zones they escaped from, in South Sudan.

“Most of our people, they are now thinking about going back even to Sudan, because if there’s no food which means we are going to die here because of food, while we’re also running there because of war”, one woman said.

Oxfam International’s executive director Gabriela Bucher said, “The richest countries are slashing their food aid even as millions of people go hungry; this is an extraordinary political failure”.

Islamic Relief Worldwide said, “Cutting aid in the middle of a pandemic is morally abhorrent and risks rolling back decades of development”.

“It’s painful, because governments have the money”, said Save the Children’s chief executive Inger Ashing, “That thousands of children will be dying of hunger and disease in 2021 is a political choice”.

Fayda, living among conflict in Yemen, told World Vision, “When humanitarian workers came to my hut, they thought I had food because smoke was coming from my kitchen. But I was not cooking food for my children – instead I could only give them hot water and herbs, after which they went to sleep hungry. I thought about suicide several times, but I did not do it because of my children.”

Ahmed Shehu is the regional coordinator for the Civil Society Network of Lake Chad Basin.

“The situation here is really dire. Seventy per cent of people in this region are farmers but they can’t access their land because of violence, so they can’t produce food," Shehu said.

“Now they have become beggars themselves.”

“We as aid workers cannot safely even get to people to help them. Some of our members risked the journey to reach starving communities and were abducted – we don’t know where they are. This has a huge impact on those of us desperate to help," Shehu said.

SHARE ME

More Stories