Thursday, 6 May 2021, 5:15 pm
At least 155 million people faced crisis levels
of food insecurity in 2020 because of conflict, extreme
weather events and economic shocks linked in part to
COVID-19, a UN-partnered flagship report said on
Wednesday.
It’s been five years since
hunger levels were this bad across 55 countries under
review, according to the Global Network Against Food Crises
(GNAFC),
which noted that 20 million more people went hungry last
year than in 2019.
Countries in Africa remained
“disproportionally affected”, it said, adding that
conflict pushed almost 100 million people into acute food
insecurity, followed by economic shocks (40 million) and
weather extremes (16 million).
Vicious cycle: