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	Rising food prices, job losses, and unabated conflict spark fears of rising hunger in Africa by International Committee of the Red Cross, agencies   Oct. 2020   Rising food prices, job losses, and unabated conflict spark fears of rising hunger in communities across Africa. (ICRC)   Rising food prices and job losses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic are raising fears that food insecurity and malnutrition in lower-income communities across Africa are on the rise, particularly in places where conflict has continued unabated, disrupting people's access to markets and ability to farm.   A recent survey by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) among 2,400 people in 10 African countries found that since the start of the pandemic, 94 percent of survey respondents reported that prices of food and other essentials in their local markets had increased, while 82 percent said they had lost income or revenue. Only 7 percent said they had enough savings to cope with a prolonged crisis.   "The risk is that as food prices rise and people's income plummets, we could see a rise in malnutrition because families can't afford enough food, or that the foods they can afford are less nutrient-rich," said Pablo Lozano, ICRC's economic security analyst for Africa.   "We heard very clearly in our survey that people in the communities in which we work are financially struggling. This is especially true among those who relied on day labour to get by or small business owners as well as communities that were already struggling with food insecurity due to conflict or violence."   In Nigeria's conflict-stricken northeast, the ICRC has seen an increase in malnutrition rates among children in the nutrition centres it supports. The number of children treated by the outpatient nutrition programme grew by 20 percent, while the number of severe malnutrition cases grew by 10 percent compared to the same period last year. The increase in patients was recorded even though ICRC's community outreach programme, typically the most efficient tool in identifying malnutrition, has been on hold due to COVID-19.   "We are very concerned by the trend, especially in Maiduguri," said Thomas Ndambu, ICRC nutritionist. "I am certain that when Nigerian Red Cross volunteers resume their community outreach, the number of malnutrition cases will surge."   A similar trend has been observed in Somalia. ICRC and the Somali Red Crescent have seen a rise in admissions into their supplementary feeding programmes this year. In 2020, 17,000 malnourished children under five and pregnant and breastfeeding women were assisted in the first six months of 2020, compared to 11,900 in the whole of 2019. The expectation is that the numbers of malnutrition cases in Somalia will continue to climb in the last quarter of 2020, as the country still reels from violence, conflict, floods, and locusts on top of COVID-19 complications.   Meanwhile, in Burkina Faso, where violence has escalated despite the pandemic, about 2.8 million people, many of them forcibly displaced from their homes, are now estimated to face crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, representing a more than 200 percent increase from the same period last year, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System.   A SMART survey done in August 2020 in 11 municipalities found 11 percent of children under five and pregnant and breastfeeding women to be suffering from moderate acute malnutrition, and 3 percent suffering from severe acute malnutrition.   "The level of hunger is rising dangerously due to violence, lack of access to arable land, fragile adaptation strategies such as sales of household assets and livestock. This has been made worse by the cyclical droughts and the flooding this year." said Mathew Kenyanjui, ICRC's economic security coordinator in Burkina Faso.   In Chad, the situation has dramatically deteriorated in 2020 due to the highly volatile security situation in parts of the country that has forced people from their homes, often more than once, as well as COVID-19 and climate shocks like droughts and floods. In the Lake Chad region, 65 percent of families in the country are estimated to live on just 2 USD a day.   Flooding has also compounded already staggering food insecurity and malnutrition levels in South Sudan, where more than half of the country's 11 million people are estimated to face severe food insecurity. Protracted conflict and armed violence have impacted livelihoods for decades and forced millions of people to flee their homes and abandon their crops. Markets are often destroyed in armed clashes, disrupting people's access to food. If borders were to close due to COVID-19, South Sudan would face dramatic consequences and the level of food insecurity would rise significantly, given that a lot of the country's food is imported.   Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICRC continues to provide food to communities facing conflict and violence across Africa as well as work with national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and local clinics and health care facilities to treat moderate and severe malnutrition. The ICRC has economic security programmes, which includes support to people's livelihoods, nutrition, and living conditions, in 20 countries in Africa.   http://www.icrc.org/en/document/world-food-day-rising-food-prices-job-losses-and-unabated-conflict-spark-fears-rising http://www.icrc.org/en/what-we-do/covid-19-pandemic   Sep. 2020   The Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) today held a high-level event to present a review of the most recent global data available on how the knock-on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are driving up acute hunger in vulnerable countries that were already wracked by food crises even before the novel coronavirus arrived on the scene.   New data related to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, reveal that the central African nation has now become the world's largest food crisis in terms of absolute numbers of the acutely food-insecure - a staggering 21.8 million people. This, as the impacts of COVID-19 related control measures aggravated pre-existing hunger drivers in the country: insecurity and armed conflict, an extended economic slump, and heavy rains and flooding.   Mark Lowcock, the United Nations' Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told the high-level side event that the current food crisis was the biggest the world had seen for 50 years but stressed that it was not too late to act to prevent acute hunger from becoming a long-lasting problem.   In addition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the worst deteriorations in acute hunger in recent months have taken place in Burkina Faso - which has witnessed a nearly 300 percent uptick in the overall number of people experiencing acute hunger since the start of 2020 - as well as Nigeria, Somalia and the Sudan, according to a synthesis report presented today by the Global Network.   The report provides an update on the 55 countries that were identified by the Network in early 2020 as already being in food crises as of late 2019.   Large increases in the overall number of acutely hungry people have been registered in northern Nigeria (a 73 percent increase, to 8.7 million people), Somalia (67 percent increase, to 3.5 million people) and the Sudan (64 percent increase, to 9.6 million people, or nearly a quarter of the country's population).   In terms of the prevalence of acute food insecurity among a country's population, four countries (Central African Republic, Honduras, Lesotho and Somalia) have experienced an increase of more than 10 percentage points in the share of people facing acute hunger.   In the Central African Republic, for example, today half the total population is so food insecure that they require urgent assistance.   The acute hunger situation is also deteriorating in Eswatini, Haiti and Honduras, today's report said.   Participants in today's event stressed that these trends underscore the importance not only of maintaining humanitarian assistance to meet these needs, but the longer-term imperative of building more resilient food systems.   The Global Network Against Food Crises was founded in 2016 by the European Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the World Food Programme (WFP). It seeks to better link, integrate and guide existing initiatives, partnerships, programmes and policy processes to sustainably address the root causes of food crises.   Acute food insecurity, or acute hunger, is when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger. It is a metric that draws on internationally accepted measures of extreme hunger, such as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) and the Cadre Harmonise. People can slide into acute hunger rapidly as a result of sudden shocks.   * September update of the 2020 Global Report on Food Crises with a special focus on COVID‑19: http://bit.ly/3jPhjAG http://www.fightfoodcrises.net/ http://hungermap.wfp.org/   * Impacts of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition: developing effective policy responses to address the hunger and malnutrition pandemic, by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security (Sep. 2020): http://www.fao.org/3/cb1000en/cb1000en.pdf   July 2020   The Hunger Virus: How Covid-19 is fuelling Hunger, a report from Oxfam International   COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. By the end of the year 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself.   The pandemic is the final straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers.   Meanwhile, those at the top are continuing to make a profit: eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders since January even as the pandemic was spreading across the globe - ten times more than has been requested in the UN COVID-19 appeal to stop people going hungry.   While governments must act to contain the spread of this deadly disease, Oxfam is also calling for urgent action to end this hunger crisis and build fairer, more robust, and sustainable food systems.   ‘COVID-19 is causing us a lot of harm. Giving my children something to eat in the morning has become difficult. We are totally dependent on the sale of milk, and with the closure of markets we can’t sell the milk anymore. If we don’t sell milk, we don't eat.’- Kadidia Diallo, a female milk producer in Burkina Faso.   The COVID-19 pandemic has added fuel to the fire of an already growing hunger crisis. Even before the pandemic struck, hunger was on the rise. In 2019, 821 million people were estimated to be food insecure, of which approximately 149 million suffered crisis-level hunger or worse. Now the coronavirus has combined with the impacts of conflict, spiralling inequality and an escalating climate crisis to shake an already broken global food system to its foundations, leaving millions more on the brink of starvation.   The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that the number of people experiencing crisis-level hunger will rise to 270 million before the end of the year as a result of the pandemic, an 82% increase since 2019. This means between 6,000 and 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to the social and economic impacts of the pandemic before the end of the year, perhaps more than will die each day from the disease by that point.   This brief explores how the COVID-19 pandemic is fuelling hunger in an already hungry world. It highlights the 10 extreme hunger hotspots where the food crisis is most severe and getting worse as a result of the pandemic: Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Afghanistan, Venezuela, the West African Sahel, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Haiti. Together these countries and regions account for 65% of people facing crisis level hunger globally.   But the story does not end there. New hunger hotspots are also emerging. Middle-income countries such as India, South Africa, and Brazil are experiencing rapidly rising levels of hunger as millions of people that were just about managing have been tipped over the edge by the pandemic. Even the world’s richest countries are not immune.   Data from the UK government shows that during the first few weeks of the lockdown as many as 7.7 million adults reduced their meal portion sizes or missed meals, and up to 3.7 million adults sought charity food or used a food bank.   This brief also explores why so many people are going hungry and why so many more are so vulnerable to hunger. It shines a light on a food system that has trapped millions of people in hunger on a planet that produces more than enough food for everyone.   A system that has enabled eight of the biggest food and beverage companies in the world to pay out over $18bn to their shareholders since the start of 2020, even as the COVID-19 crisis unfolded across the globe. This is over 10 times the amount of food and agriculture assistance funds requested in the UN's COVID-19 humanitarian appeal.   Oxfam recognizes the need for governments to take urgent action to contain the spread of the coronavirus but is also calling on them to act now to end this hunger crisis.   To save lives now and in the future, governments must: (1) fully fund the UN's humanitarian appeal, (2) build fairer, more resilient, and more sustainable food systems, beginning with a high-level Global Food Crisis Summit when the Committee on World Food Security meets in October, (3) promote women’s participation and leadership in decisions on how to fix the broken food system, (4) cancel debt to allow lower-income countries to put social protection measures in place, (5) support the UN’s call for a global ceasefire, and (6) take urgent action to tackle the climate crisis.   http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/hunger-virus-how-covid-19-fuelling-hunger-hungry-world http://www.wfp.org/news/world-food-programme-assist-largest-number-hungry-people-ever-coronavirus-devastates-poor http://bit.ly/31dU7WO http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/story/statement-state-food-security-and-nutrition-world-2020 http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/publication/2020/07/covid-19-impact-seeds-future-hunger-pandemic   Aug. 2020   FEWS NET estimates 90 to 100 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian food assistance in 2020 across its 29 monitored countries, roughly a quarter of whom are in urban and peri-urban areas. These totals represent a sizable increase and notable shift in the population in need of humanitarian food assistance relative to assessed 2020 needs prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when total food assistance needs were estimated to be roughly 25 percent lower, and one-tenth of needs were in urban and peri-urban areas.   Across the globe, governments continue to enact measures to suppress the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures consist largely of movement restrictions and social distancing that help limit the spread of the virus, though they also limit access to income-earning opportunities for many populations and slow trade activities.   For example, poor urban households rely heavily on daily wage labor and self-employment to earn the income necessary to purchase food to meet their basic needs. However, COVID-19-related restrictions have led to a significant decline in income and food access among poor urban households.   http://fews.net/covid-19-pandemic-impacts-food-security http://www.ipcinfo.org/ http://www.wfp.org/publications/covid-19-situation-reports Visit the related web page
	Over 500 organisations call on IMF to adopt policies to reduce inequality by Plan, Cafod, HRW, ITUC, Caritas, agencies   We, the undersigned, call on the IMF to immediately stop promoting austerity around the world, and instead advocate policies that advance gender justice, reduce inequality, and decisively put people and planet first.   As those who care about governments’ ability to fulfill human rights and advance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, we express the utmost alarm at the IMF’s advice for countries to return to austerity once the current crisis recedes.   This pandemic has laid bare the deadly repercussions of systematically weak investments in health, education, and social protection, hardest felt by marginalized populations including women, older people, racial and ethnic minorities, informal workers, and low-income families.   This crisis has also shone light on the shrinking of the middle classes and worsening gap between rich and poor.   The IMF has spoken repeatedly of the need for a fair and green recovery. It has said that economic and gender inequality, climate change, and poor governance can weaken growth and undermine stability.   In recent years, it developed operational guidance for staff on embedding gender and economic inequality analysis into its work and approved a macroeconomic framework for social spending. All of this would suggest that the IMF is ready to use its influence and authority to support countries in reducing inequality.   And yet, despite this rhetoric and its own warnings of deepening inequality, the IMF has already started locking countries into new long-term austerity-conditioned loan programs in the past few months.   Beyond the conditionality in these recent programs, we note that a significant number of the IMF’s Covid-19 emergency financing packages contain language promoting fiscal consolidation in the recovery phase.   And with governments struggling to pay increased debt servicing and expected to continue to need extraordinary levels of external financing for years to come, IMF loan programs – and the conditions that accompany them – will play a highly influential role in shaping the economic and social landscape in the aftermath of this pandemic.   Fiscal consolidation-driven austerity would only worsen poverty and inequality and undermine the achievement of economic and social rights. The IMF’s own research corroborates this.   Time and time again, rigid and rapid fiscal consolidation conditioned in IMF programs has meant devastating cuts in health and education investments, losses of hard-earned pensions and social protections, public wage freezes, layoffs, and exacerbated unpaid care work burdens.   In all cases, it is the most vulnerable people in societies who bear the brunt of these reforms, while the elite, large corporations, and creditors enjoy the benefits.   Aside from the direct impacts, fiscal consolidation doesn’t ensure economic recovery and the creation of new jobs, and rapid consolidation could instead deepen the downturn. It won’t deliver a just transition towards climate resilient economies either.   Instead of austerity cuts, it is critical to create fiscal space and give governments the time, flexibility, and support to achieve a sustainable, inclusive, and just recovery.   Immediate and urgent steps are needed to support the financial health of countries through grants and other highly concessional financing, supporting debt cancellation and restructuring, and issuing a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights.   Medium to longer-term recovery efforts, however, should continue promoting further fiscal and policy space that allows for an increase, rather than a decrease, in social spending, and progressive tax policies that collect sufficient revenue and redistribute wealth fairly.   This means systematically assessing the impacts of fiscal policy reforms on gender and economic inequality and rejecting those that have negative social impacts.   It means negotiating agreements transparently with input from a range of stakeholders, including civil society, through national social dialogue.   It means recommending and promoting progressive tax reforms such as taxes on wealth and the excess profits of large corporations, meaningfully combating tax evasion, avoidance, and illicit financial flows.   And it means systematically supporting governments to restructure their debts so that they can prioritize investments in quality public services.   The global economy stands at a crossroads between further decades of austerity and debt crises, or adopting a macroeconomic framework compatible with fighting inequality, pursuing climate justice, realizing human rights, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.   Ahead of the 2020 IMF Annual Meetings, we call on the IMF to turn away from the mistakes of the past and finally close the dark chapter on IMF-conditioned austerity for good.   * Full list of signatories: http://bit.ly/3nrroqL Visit the related web page
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