Worldwide population continues to grow, but this is not always a sign of well-being. In fact, even more people are suffering from hunger. In 2018 they were more than 821 million, tragically increasing for the third year in a row.
This is the alarm that emerges from the publication of new UN data on the state of global food insecurity. For this study, the UN collaborated with the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (Oxfam). Oxfam is an international confederation of non-profit organizations whose aim is reducing global poverty.
Worldwide Population Is Starving
There are a number of intertwining causes behind the current scenario. These include conflicts and extreme climate phenomena. Not to mention the effects of decades of economic policies that fuel the inequalities between large food multinationals and millions of small-scale producers, on whom most of the global production depends. The result of all this is absolute poverty.
The situation is particularly tragic in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Here, in fact, tens of millions of people are starving due to regional conflicts or severe, increasingly prolonged droughts that prevent access to food and means of production. Above all, the African region of the Sahel is experiencing an unprecedented crisis. Here more than 22 million people are without the slightest access to primary services, and half of the population is without access to drinking water. In addition, there are 4.2 million displaced persons and more than 7 million people, including 5 million children under the age of 5, affected by acute malnutrition.
How to Solve the Problem
According to Oxfam, food security has shamefully disappeared from the global political agenda. Ten years have passed since two consecutive food crises, which have had devastating impacts on the world’s poorest people and their ability to feed themselves properly. However, nothing seems to have changed. On the contrary, the data show that the situation has worsened. A clear turnaround is therefore necessary to counter the rise in global hunger. Human rights must be put at the centre and a fair and sustainable food system must be built.
This is an unacceptable status quo. For this reason, Oxfam has made an urgent appeal to the international community. According to the association, industrialized countries should stop “ignoring” a central issue for the future of the planet. They must first of all intervene with greater and immediate aid in the countries most affected. Then we need to understand how to solve the problem at its root. That is why we need effective policies capable of eliminating the causes of this global emergency in the medium term.
