A coalition of gangs has prevented the distribution of diesel and gasoline for over a month to protest a plan to cut fuel subsidies. Most transport is halted, with looting and gang shootouts becoming increasingly common.

“We have for the first time a famine present in Haiti,” Ulrika Richardson, resident and humanitarian co-ordinator for the U.N. system in Haiti, said in a telephone interview.

“The gang violence has cut off the capital from the food-producing south, and that means that we have now an increase in food insecurity.”

A U.N. spokesperson later clarified that Richardson should have described the situation as catastrophic hunger rather than famine.

Richardson said other countries need to do more to support Haiti, as the Caribbean country’s humanitarian response plan for this year has received less than 30 per cent of the required funding.

“While we address the current symptoms of the multiple crises that Haitians are facing… the security and the fuel crisis — we also have to make sure that we invest in the longer-term root causes, such as impunity, such as corruption,” said Richardson, the U.N.’s most senior humanitarian official in Haiti.

Some 19,200 people in Haiti’s Cite Soleil are suffering famine conditions, according to an analysis by U.N. agencies and aid groups on Friday. A famine is declared when at least 20 per cent of the households in a region are suffering famine conditions.

The analysis said that in total 4.7 million people — nearly half of Haiti’s population — are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.

The situation was “close to breaking point,” Jean-Martin Bauer, World Food Program country director in Haiti, told reporters earlier.

A U.N. report released on Friday said children as young as 10 and elderly women have been subjected to sexual violence, including collective rapes for hours in front of their parents or children.

“Gangs use sexual violence to instil fear, and alarmingly the number of cases increases by the day as the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Haiti deepens,” said Nada Al-Nashif, the acting human rights chief.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry last week asked for military assistance from abroad to confront the gangs, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed “a rapid action force” to help Haiti’s police.

It is not immediately evident which countries would participate in such a force.

U.S. development agency USAID on Friday sent a disaster assistance response team to Haiti, the agency’s chief, Samantha Power, wrote on Twitter.

Such teams are dispatched in response to natural disasters and complex emergencies, and typically include infectious disease specialists, nutritionists, and logistics experts, according to USAID’s website.

The U.S. State Department has offered support for Haiti’s police and has sent a Coast Guard vessel to patrol the area.

The U.S. and Canada in the coming days will deliver armoured vehicles to the Haitian police that have been purchased by Haiti, U.S. assistant secretary of state Brian Nichols said in an interview with Haitian TV on Thursday.

— Reporting for Reuters by Brian Ellsworth in Miami and Paul Carrel; additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations.

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“There’ll be many malnourished. At least 20 per cent will be extremely malnourished,” said the organization’s executive director, Andy Harrington.

Two out of every 10,000 of those people will die, according to hunger metrics, he added, but the reality is often much worse.

Displacement due to conflict, supply-chain disruptions including grain shipments from Ukraine and Russia, inflation and severe drought have contributed to worsening hunger, Harrington said. Many countries in Africa import grain from Ukraine or Russia and much of it is trapped or held back because of war.

He saw first-hand the impact during a recent trip to Ethiopia. He visited one emergency food distribution centre run by Canadian Foodgrains Bank partner, Tearfund, which gives out monthly supplies of maize, beans and cooking oil to families.

Ethiopia is in the midst of a drought “almost unprecedented in terms of its length,” Harrington said.

The country has had five failed or late rainy seasons over the past three years.

“I met and was talking to people who had to make choices about which child to feed, had to make choices about whether they could eat themselves, as parents, or feed their children,” he said. “Many of them were skipping meals. Some of them hadn’t eaten in some time.”

It was raining when he was in Ethiopia but that moisture came too late. Many crops had already failed. Even among some of the organization’s conservation agriculture projects, which teach farmers drought-proofing skills, some crops were suffering.

Food is short, and what’s there is expensive, Harrington said. In Kenya, inflation rates have reached 40 per cent since December.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization now says hunger statistics, which had improved in the last few years, have slid backward. Projections suggest that eight per cent of the world population will face hunger by 2030, the same level as projected in 2015.

The price of emergency food baskets has risen dramatically. The Canadian Foodgrains Bank sources food from a network of local suppliers, but has found that supplies have dried up or suppliers are reluctant to set a price because costs are changing so quickly.

“It’s getting very difficult,” Harrington said. He thanked Canadian supporters and said that, in Ethiopia, he has seen direct results of their giving. He asked people to “give, learn, pray, advocate” and said there are many ways to get involved.

The federal government matches donations for humanitarian work four to one, Harrington added.

– This article was originally published at the Manitoba Co-operator.

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Together, Russia and Ukraine account for almost 30 per cent of wheat exports, nearly 20 per cent of corn exports and close to 80 per cent of sunflower seed products, including oils. The war has largely shut off grain exports from Ukraine, cut seeding of this year’s crop, and is driving up world prices for grain and oilseeds. The war has also increased energy and fertilizer prices.

I research famines and extreme food security crises and am part of a group of independent experts who review the data, analysis and conclusions whenever a national assessment indicates that a famine may be occurring or about to occur.

The people of Ukraine deserve all of the attention and help that they are receiving. But I believe the global community must not lose sight of humanitarian suffering occurring elsewhere now, including many countries far from the spotlight.

The war in Ukraine has pushed prices to near all-time highs. As of April 8, the average cost of staple food grains had jumped by more than 17 per cent from February levels. And with the war likely to continue, a global supply shortfall could lead nations to adopt measures such as export bans that further distort food markets.

The global grain market is very concentrated. More than 85 per cent of global wheat exports come from just seven sources: the EU, U.S., Canada, Russia, Australia, Ukraine and Argentina. The same share of corn exports comes from just four countries: the U.S., Argentina, Brazil and Ukraine.

Many nations across the Middle East and North Africa are major wheat importers and buy much of their supply from Russia and Ukraine — they had been providing 90 per cent of Somalia’s wheat imports, 80 per cent of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s, and about 40 per cent each of Yemen’s and Ethiopia’s.

Losing Ukrainian and Russian exports means higher grain prices and much longer shipping distances from alternative suppliers such as Australia, the U.S., Canada and Argentina — at a time when high energy prices are raising shipping costs. And since global grain markets are denominated in U.S. dollars, the dollar’s current strength makes grain even more expensive for countries with weaker currencies.

For nations already at risk of famine, these effects could be disastrous.

Prior to the war, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 161 million people in 42 countries were in extreme food insecurity, meaning they needed urgent food assistance. Over a half-million people faced famine levels of food deprivation — by far the most extreme levels of hunger since at least the early 2000s. The most badly affected countries include Yemen, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Kenya.

The causes of these crises vary.

Violent conflict is a common factor across most of them. Some countries are still struggling to recover from the economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. A devastating drought is also affecting the Horn of Africa, with rains from March through May now forecast to be well below average. This would constitute the fourth failed or below-average rainy season in a row for areas of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.

Even before the Ukraine invasion, this combination of factors had already led to the highest numbers on record of people needing food and other humanitarian assistance for their survival in the East African Region. Rural labour markets and the price of livestock — the two things that the poorest have to sell — have collapsed due to the drought, precisely as global food prices have spiked. A dramatic decline in purchasing power was a major driver of the 2011 famine in Somalia, and the same circumstances are rapidly taking shape now.

For countries in crisis, the UN World Food Program is the primary global provider of food for at-risk populations. In 2021, it procured nearly half of its grain from Ukraine.

Much of its food aid is delivered as direct cash transfers rather than in-kind supplies. But whatever form it takes, the cost of that aid has increased substantially with rising food, fuel and shipping prices. World Food Program officials estimate that the cost of its operations has increased by 44 per cent since the start of the war in Ukraine, and the agency now faces a 50 per cent funding gap.

The crisis in Ukraine has also spotlighted a growing gap between funding and needs, especially in some of the world’s poorest countries.

For example, the UN issued a flash appeal for humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in early March 2022. By April 15 it was 65 per cent funded. Countries at risk of famine, whose appeals have been out longer, have received much less funding. On April 15, Afghanistan’s appeal was 13.5 per cent funded; South Sudan, 8.2 per cent; and Somalia only 4.4 per cent. Overall funding for global humanitarian needs stood at 6.5 per cent of requested levels.

When I worked as the deputy regional director for CARE International in East Africa, I often worried about how a humanitarian crisis in one country might have spillover effects in others. There could be influxes of refugees who need assistance, or humanitarian staff might have to be shifted to support the response to the new crisis.

In those days, some crises triggered by drought could affect several countries in the region at once. But the ripple effects from the war in Ukraine could lead to the worsening of humanitarian crises around the world.

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During a U.N. Security Council meeting, Guterres urged Ethiopia’s government to allow “unrestricted movement of desperately needed fuel, cash, communications equipment and humanitarian supplies” into Tigray, Amhara and Afar.

“Our colleagues on the ground are sharing increasingly alarming eye-witness testimony of the suffering — including growing accounts of hunger-related deaths,” Guterres said.

“In locations where screening has been possible, we are seeing acute malnutrition rates that remind us of the onset of the 2011 Somalia famine,” he said.

The 15-member Security Council met after the Ethiopian government last week expelled seven senior U.N. officials for meddling in internal affairs. The United Nations has rejected the move and said there was no proof to back up the accusations.

Guterres it was “particularly disturbing” given the looming famine, while U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield described it as “reckless,” adding: “There’s no justification for the government of Ethiopia’s action, none at all.”

War broke out 11 months ago between Ethiopia’s federal troops and forces loyal to the TPLF, which controls Tigray. Thousands have died, millions have fled their homes and the conflict has spilled into neighbouring Amhara and Afar.

Guterres said up to seven million people in Tigray, Amhara and Afar need help, including five million in Tigray where some 400,000 people are estimated to be living in famine-like conditions.

“Ethiopian children are starving. People are dying because they cannot access food, water and basic health care. This is not a situation caused by natural disaster. It is caused by those who continue to choose the path of war,” Ireland’s U.N. Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason told the council.

Guterres urged the Security Council to back U.N. aid efforts. However, any strong action by the body — such as sanctions — is unlikely as Russia and China have made clear they believe the Tigray conflict is an internal affair for Ethiopia.

China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun on Wednesday called for “quiet diplomacy in order to prevent a deadlock” over the expulsion of the U.N. officials.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols at the U.N.

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“What’s the difference today?” Thomas-Greenfield said. “Today we should have better information… We can save lives if we know where to go and if we put the funding toward it.”

Thomas-Greenfield and Beasley both recounted these stories during a U.N. Security Council meeting on food security, where U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that more than 30 million people in over three dozen countries are “just one step away from a declaration of famine.”

“Famine and hunger are no longer about lack of food. They are now largely man-made — and I use the term deliberately. They are concentrated in countries affected by large-scale, protracted conflict,” Guterres told the 15-member body.

He announced the creation of a high-level U.N. task force on preventing famine, to be led by U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock.

“Parts of Yemen, South Sudan and Burkina Faso are in the grip of famine or conditions akin to famine,” Guterres said. “The Democratic Republic of the Congo experienced the world’s largest food crisis last year, with nearly 21.8 million people facing acute hunger between July and December.”

Guterres, Beasley and Thomas-Greenfield also raised particular concern about food shortages in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where Ethiopian government troops began an offensive against Tigray’s former ruling party after regional forces attacked federal army bases in the region in November.

“Food stocks are depleted. Acute malnutrition is rising. The ongoing violence has prevented humanitarians from helping desperately hungry people,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

In war-torn South Sudan, Guterres said 60 per cent of people are increasingly hungry: “Food prices are so high that just one plate of rice and beans costs more than 180 per cent of the average daily salary — the equivalent of about $400 here in New York.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols.

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The proposal was one of two related to the pandemic that failed to make headway at a three-day meeting of the Geneva-based trade body, an outcome its spokesman described as “disappointing” in a difficult year for the institution.

The 164-member WTO, currently leaderless and with no functioning appeals body for trade disputes, is facing the biggest crisis in its 25-year history.

U.S. Ambassador Dennis Shea, in his final major address to the organization this week, described “wide divergences among the membership” and said the WTO had underperformed.

However, critics blame the Trump administration for its difficulties, saying Washington has hamstrung the WTO by blocking the appointment of a new director-general and opposing judge appointments to its top court.

Close to 100 countries voiced support for the food aid proposal, originally submitted by Singapore, which envisaged a ban on export restrictions on food intended for the World Food Program (WFP).

The U.N. agency, which won a Nobel Peace Prize this year for its work combating global hunger, has warned that 2021 will be “catastrophic” with famines possible due partly to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said WTO members, who must decide by consensus, could not agree. Some countries appeared to have concerns the proposal might impinge on their own domestic food security, he added, saying India was among them.

WFP’s Tomson Phiri said that a ban would have been a “shot in the arm” for his organization, describing how blockages had delayed rice deliveries to West Africa earlier this year.

The other proposal on which WTO members could not agree was a waiver on IP rights for COVID medicines, Rockwell told reporters, confirming the outcome of a meeting last week.

The appointment of a new WTO director-general was also raised at Friday’s meeting and there was still no consensus.

“I think what the last three days have shown us very clearly is that we need a DG,” Rockwell said.

— Emma Farge is a Reuters correspondent covering the United Nations and related matters in Geneva.

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Some $30 million will be spent in Yemen, $15 million each in Afghanistan and northeast Nigeria, $7 million each in South Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo and $6 million in Burkina Faso (all figures US$). Lowcock said $20 million had also been set aside in anticipation of a worsening situation in Ethiopia.

“The prospect of a return to a world in which famines are commonplace would be heart wrenching and obscene in a world where there is more than enough food for everyone. Famines result in agonizing and humiliating deaths,” Lowcock said.

“Their impact on a country is devastating and long lasting,” he said in a statement.

Nearly $500 million has been paid into the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund in 2020. It is used to enable the world body to respond quickly to new humanitarian crises or underfunded emergencies without having to wait for earmarked donations.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols.

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The WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for its efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict, said it had so far raised US$1.6 billion.

“We’ve got a lot more money to raise to make certain we avert famine,” David Beasley, executive director of the WFP, said at a conference organized by the U.N,’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Beaseley noted seven million people had died from hunger this year as the COVID-19 pandemic, which could double hunger worldwide, claimed a further one million lives.

“If we don’t sort out COVID, (the) hunger death rate could be three, four, five times that,” said Beaseley.

The Rome-based WFP says it helps some 97 million people in about 88 countries each year, and that one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat.

After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise again since 2016, driven by the twin scourges of conflict and climate change.

“If you think about the wealth on Earth today we shouldn’t see one single child (go) hungry or die from starvation,” said Beaseley.

The WFP has dispatched medical cargoes to over 120 countries during the pandemic, and provided passenger services to ferry humanitarian workers where commercial flights were unavailable.

The agency, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, is funded entirely by donations. It provides school meals to 17.3 million children globally and delivered 4.2 million tonnes of food to regions or countries in need in 2019.

— Reporting for Reuters by Maytaal Angel.

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Official rations are down to 300 grams (10.6 ounces) per person per day, the lowest ever for this time of year, the U.N. said following a food security assessment it carried out at Pyongyang’s request from March 29 to April 12.

It found that 10.1 million people were suffering from severe food insecurity, “meaning they do not have enough food till the next harvest,” U.N. World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel said.

North Korea’s population is around 25.2 million, according to its Central Bureau of Statistics, the report said.

Verhoosel said the word “famine” was not being used in the current crisis, but it might come to that in a few months or years. “The situation is very serious today — that’s a fact.”

The country suffered a famine in the mid-1990s believed to have killed as many as three million people.

For its assessment the WFP, one of only a few aid agencies with access to the country, gained widespread entry to farms, households, nurseries and food distribution centres.

Verhoosel blamed a combination of dry spells, heat waves and flooding for the new crisis, which the U.S. State Department said was the government’s fault.

“The DPRK regime continues to exploit, starve and neglect its own people in order to advance its unlawful nuclear and weapons program,” a department spokeswoman said, adding that it could meet its people’s needs if it redirected state funds.

After a second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump failed to produce a deal to end the program in return for sanctions relief, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un set a year-end deadline for Washington to show more flexibility.

North Korea has for years relied on regular supplies of U.N. food aid.

Its agricultural output of 4.9 million tonnes was the lowest since 2008-09, leading to a food deficit of 1.36 million tonnes in the 2018-19 marketing year, the WPF report said.

Prospects for the 2019 early season crops of wheat and barley were worrisome. “The effects of repeated climate shocks are compounded by shortages of fuel, fertilizer and spare parts crucial for farming,” Verhoosel said.

The WFP plans to make another assessment during July and August.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Miles; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington.

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Alberta farm communities continue to be huge supporters of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank — raising more than $2.6 million last year. One of the foundations of that support has been “food study tours,” where farmers (who pay their travel costs) go on tours of Foodgrains Bank projects.

“They meet people and see how our assistance changes lives — meeting with people like that makes a deep impression on them and they bring back those stories to Alberta,” said Andre Visscher, the organization’s co-ordinator for southern Alberta.

“It’s very important. We must have had 20 to 30 farmers, maybe more, who have gone on these food study tours and seen what we are doing with the money.

“When you visit some of these communities, it makes the world a lot smaller.”

Visscher has heard many of those farmers share their experiences with members of their communities.

“When you hear people tell the stories of their visits, you know they’re speaking from the heart. It’s quite touching.”

Groups in 39 communities across Alberta undertook fundraising pro­jects this year. Most were growing projects where a group of farmers provide the equipment and labour to seed, grow, and harvest crops on land (rented or donated for the season). Companies typically donate the seed and most of the inputs; write cheques; or pay premium prices for the crop. Barley is the crop most often grown, followed by wheat. In Linden this year, it was canola.

“They had the best year ever,” said Visscher. “On two quarters of land, they raised close to $200,000. They had a large event, about 500 people came out — it was pretty much the whole town.”

The first growing project harvest came off in early August and the last few are just wrapping up.

“Everybody was surprised at the yields, even in central Alberta,” said Visscher.

While Mother Nature throws some curveballs every year, one thing remains constant with every project in every village or town, he said.

“You have a group get together to grow a crop — that’s what they know how to do. But to do it together builds community. They make real friendships in these groups.”

The need also remains constant, although Visscher said “this was such a strange year, there were so many events around the world.”

That included famines in four African nations — more than 20 million people in South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen are at risk of starvation — and the situation in Myanmar has seen more than half a million Rohingya people flee their homes to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

But the message that farmers bring back from food studies tours isn’t that the world is an awfully cruel place, but that giving can bring real and enduring change, said Visscher.

He points to the tour to Ethiopia that he went on two years ago. Participants saw ‘food-for-work’ projects, including one community where villagers were digging irrigation canals that will alleviate the threat posed by drought.

But it was one small thing that made a deep impression on Visscher.

“I met with a family that had received a couple of beehives from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank,” he said. “They didn’t need the honey, they sold it and that income allowed them to become food secure.”

The family has a plot that is only a little more than two acres in size, and can only produce enough food to last seven or eight months of the year. The income from selling honey got them through the rest of the year.

But it didn’t stop there.

“At the same time, the farmer was training others in the village how to look after the bees. When I met them, they had 11 beehives. So they had made quite a bit of progress.”

Visscher and Terence Barg, the regional co-ordinator for the northern half of Alberta, “are always looking for new projects.” They can be reached at alberta@foodgrainsbank.ca.

Loads of grain can also be donated at elevators and cash donations can be made at the Canadian Foodgrains Bank website.

“For every dollar we raise for food assistance programs, the Canadian government gives us another $4 — up to $25 million a year,” said Visscher.

The website has details of the organization’s work and an interactive map of growing projects across the country.

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