The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a recently published report that Afghanistan is one of the seven hungriest countries in the word.
The report, produced by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN), was launched by the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) on Wednesday. The GNAFC is an international alliance of the United Nations, the European Union, and governmental and non-governmental agencies working to tackle food crises together.
The report highlights a rise in the number of people who were acutely food insecure and in dire need of urgent food, nutrition, and livelihood assistance for the fourth consecutive year in 2022.
The report further states that around 258 million people in 58 countries and territories faced acute food insecurity at crisis or worse levels (IPC/CH Phase 3-5) in 2022, up from 193 million people in 53 countries and territories in 2021. This is the highest figure in the seven-year history of this report.
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Over half of those affected were in Somalia (57%), while such extreme circumstances also occurred in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen. The report reveals that around 35 million people experienced emergency levels of acute hunger in 39 countries, with more than half located in just four countries – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen.
The report attributes the adverse impact on global food security to the war in Ukraine, with Ukraine and Russia playing a major role in the production and global trade of fuel and essential food commodities. The Covid-19 pandemic has also had a negative effect on food security.
