Oxfam projected in July 2020 that by the end of the year "12,000 people per day could die from COVID-19 linked hunger", with the United Nations stating that a total of 265 million people face acute food insecurity – an increase of 135 million people as a result of the pandemic. The situation further sustained into 2021 and beyond as 2021–2022 global supply chain crisis affecting the delivery of food and 2021-2022 global energy crisis affecting the production of petrochemical fertilizer essential for food production.Ī confirmed 6,881,955 people have died directly from COVID-19, but Oxfam indicated in their July 2020 report that when including those who have died as a result of lack of food, this number is considerably higher. Simultaneously, many poorer workers in low- and middle-income nations also lost their jobs or ability to farm as a result of these lockdowns, whilst children could not receive school meals due to the education shutdown across much of the world. As a result of these precautions and panic buying, shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic considerably rose whilst aid delivery capabilities and remittances from high-income nations fell. įollowing the international spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and thus its associated illness coronavirus disease 2019, several national governments implemented national lockdowns and international travel restrictions in order to prevent the spread of the disease. As the pandemic-incited food issues began to subside, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered another global food crises compounding already extreme price increases. In September 2020, David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, addressed the United Nations Security Council, stating that measures taken by donor countries over the course of the preceding five months, including the provision of $17 trillion in fiscal stimulus and central bank support, the suspension of debt repayments instituted by the IMF and G20 countries for the benefit of poorer countries, and donor support for WFP programmes, had averted impending famine, helping 270 million people at risk of starvation. The decision of WHO on Mato qualify COVID as a pandemic, that is “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people” also contributed to building this global-scale disaster narrative.įield evidence collected in more than 60 countries in the course of 2020 indicate however that while some disruptions (affecting the stability of the global food system) were reported at local (hoarding) and international (restrictions on exports) levels, those took place primarily during the early days/weeks of the pandemic (and the subsequent waves of lockdowns) and did not lead to any major episode of “global famine,” thus invalidating the catastrophic scenario that some experts had initially conjectured. Others talk about “complete destitution”, “unprecedented crisis”, “natural disaster”, “threat of catastrophic global famine”. In an early report, the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Oxfam-International talks about “economic devastation” while the lead-author of the UNU-WIDER report compared COVID-19 to a “poverty tsunami”. 2019–2021 locust infestation, ongoing armed conflicts, COVID-19 pandemic (including associated recession, lockdowns and travel restrictions)ĭuring the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has intensified in many places – in the second quarter of 2020 there were multiple warnings of famine later in the year.
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