Save the Children sounds the alarm on global famine & responds to Canada’s funding announcement

Toronto, April 26, 2022 – Today, Minister Sajjan announced $73 million in funding, including support for Save the Children Canada’s work in Ethiopia, to combat the escalating hunger crisis that is putting the lives of millions of children at risk in the Horn of Africa. The Minister made the announcement from the High-Level Roundtable on the Drought in the Horn of Africa. Patrick Robitaille, Head of Humanitarian Affairs at Save the Children Canada had the following response:

“We are grateful for Canada’s response to this crisis and we call on other governments to follow Canada’s initiative in reaching children and communities in dire need of life-saving interventions. The scale of this crisis is unprecedented—never in modern history have so many lives been at risk from hunger.

There are now 800 million people in the world who are chronically hungry. Canada must use its leadership at the G7 and with other global leaders to push for a global plan to address this unprecedented hunger crisis before it spirals further out of control.

Up to 283 million people across 80 countries could be acutely food insecure or at high risk this year as a perfect storm of climate, conflict and Covid has resulted in crop failures, food shortages, skyrocketing prices on basic staples, along with inequality and economic system collapse. This is not just a humanitarian crisis; this is the biggest challenge of our time—not responding accordingly will be a failure of humanity. It must be addressed with a broad view to responding to the immense chronic economic, climate, peace and security issues facing our world today.

Save the Children has identified a staggering 21 priority countries where children’s lives are in danger due to famine risk. Twenty-one countries where children do not have enough food to survive. The devastating combination of climate change, conflict and economic drivers has created an untenable situation where millions of lives may be lost.

In Somalia alone, the crisis is already worse than the famine declared in 2011 when 260,000 people—half of them children under the age of six—died of hunger and hunger-related illnesses. Without immediate action, this heartbreaking failure will be repeated.

The impacts of season after season of drought in some areas and flooding in others have been compounded by the Ukraine conflict. The crisis in Ukraine is having knock-on effects that are driving the prices of basic staples sky high. The Ukraine flag is meant to symbolize a vast blue sky over a field of wheat, celebrating the country’s status as the world’s fifth largest exporter of wheat—a staple grain for millions of people.

Children from Ethiopia to Yemen, Syria to Afghanistan, and Somalia to Kenya need urgent action now. Their lives are at stake in what can only be described as a global catastrophe.”

Climatic, conflict-related, and economic factors driving global hunger

The Horn of Africa region is at risk of experiencing a record four consecutive seasons of failed rains — something that has not been recorded since satellite record-keeping began in 1981. Since late 2016, there have been not only been multiple exceptionally dry seasons in the Horn of Africa, but also exceptionally wet seasons. These wet seasons have caused significant flooding, displacement, and also a locust outbreak that together caused massive crop and livestock losses for over 3 million people. In the Central Sahel, a spike in armed attacks against communities has caused massive displacements, disrupting access to land and livelihoods.

The Ukraine conflict alone has caused food, fuel and commodities soar. The Ukraine flag is meant to symbolize a vast blue sky over a field of wheat. Ukraine is the world’s fifth largest exporter of wheat and Russia is the world’s largest. Ukraine is also the largest producer of sunflower oil and the fourth largest producer of corn. In addition to higher market prices, Ukraine’s future production and export capacities could be threatened by the closure of 4 of its strategic ports. The uncertainty around Ukrainian wheat production results in import countries sourcing from elsewhere. Countries across the globe are heavily impacted, either directly or by repercussions of the global demand shifting to other cereals. 

In addition, these shocks have been exacerbated by COVID-19, which created massive economic upheaval, alongside direct health impacts.

By region:

East and Southern Africa—One of the worst droughts in a generation is currently unfolding in the Horn of Africa. In Somalia alone, around 1.4 million children face acute malnutrition through the end of this year, with around a quarter of them, or 330,000 children, facing severe acute malnutrition.

West and Central Africa—West Africa is facing its worst food crisis in a decade, with 27 million people at risk of going hungry. This number could rise to 38 million this June unless urgent action is taken. This situation is unprecedented in terms of the scale of the increase it represents.

Middle East—The knock-on effect of the Ukraine crisis is adding further strain to import-dependent countries in the Middle East. The cost of a basic food basket – the minimum food needs per family per month – registered an annual increase of 351% in Lebanon, the highest in the region. It was followed by Syria, with a 97% rise, and Yemen with 81% hike.

Latin America and Caribbean—Food insecurity affects 41% of the population in the Latin American region. According to the Regional Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security 2021, hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean is at its highest point since 2000.

Asia—Data for many countries across Asia is lacking, making it difficult to estimate the numbers in need across Asia. However, it is clear that Afghanistan’s protracted food crisis has deepened and widened with a record high of nearly 23 million people experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity by the end of May 2022, due to a devastating combination of drought, conflict and economic collapse.

Save the Children’s response:

Nutrition

• Establishing and equipping therapeutic supplementary feeding programs, outpatient therapeutic units, and stabilization centres, in order to treat moderate and severe acute malnutrition, and complications arising from these conditions
• Providing training for health providers on community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM), to increase quality of care
• Providing training for community health workers to recognize the signs of malnutrition amongst girls and boys under five years of age, and pregnant and lactating women/girls
• Promoting optimal infant and young child feeding practices, including exclusive breastfeeding, using peer mentoring approaches (ie mother-to-mother and father-to-father support groups)
• Engaging key decision-makers, including community leaders, grandmothers, and male caregivers, in order to sustainably increase the uptake of optimal infant and young child feeding practices

WASH – Water and Sanitation

• Lack of access to adequate water, sanitation and hygiene services and facilities is linked to an increased vulnerability to acute malnutrition. Therefore, Save the Children is doing the following:
  • Rehabilitating water points within health facilities and communities in order to ensure safe health care, and the availability of clean water
  • Constructing gender-responsive sanitation facilities, and providing health and hygiene kits to vulnerable households

Protection

• There are strong linkages between poor nutritional and health outcomes, and armed violence and insecurity. Conflict limits access to basic services, such as health care, destabilizes families, and weakens community-based protection mechanisms, further exacerbating populations’ vulnerability to acute malnutrition, and increasing exposure to violence and injury. Therefore, Save the Children is doing the following:
  • Supplying and equipping health facilities to provide gender-responsive and survivor-centered care for SGBV survivors
  • Training community-based facilitators to deliver mental health and psychosocial support services to children and youth
  • Establishing and strengthening community-based child protection committees to lead child protection identification, referral and response activities

ENDS