Every minute, 11 people die of hunger. “The Hunger Virus Multiplies” report (PDF) said the death toll from famine outpaces that of COVID-19, which kills about seven people per minute.
"Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, vulnerable communities around the world have been sending a clear, urgent and repeated message: 'Hunger may kill us before coronavirus.' Today, deaths from hunger are outpacing the virus," Oxfam said in a statement.
About 155 million people around the world live at crisis levels of food insecurity, 20 million more than last year, Oxfam says. About two-thirds of them face hunger because their country is in military conflict. Wars were the single largest driver of hunger since the pandemic started, pushing nearly 100 million people in 23 embattled countries to worse levels of food shortage.
The number of those facing famine-like conditions globally has increased by six times over the past year.
As of mid-June, the number of people falling into the most acute phase of the famine stood at 521,814 across Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen – up from 84,500 last year, an increase of more than 500 percent, according to the global report on Food Crises 2021 (PDF).
Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Afghanistan and Venezuela are places where existing food crises had been worsened by the onset of the pandemic and its economic consequences.
“Instead of battling the pandemic, warring parties fought each other, too often landing the last blow to millions already battered by weather disasters and economic shocks,” Maxman said. “Starvation continues to be used as a weapon of war, depriving civilians of food and water and impeding humanitarian relief. People can’t live safely or find food when their markets are being bombed and crops and livestock are destroyed.”
Global military spending increased by $51bn during the pandemic — an amount that exceeds by at least six times what the United Nations needs to stop hunger.
Global warming and the economic repercussions of the pandemic have caused a 40 percent increase in global food prices, the highest in more than 10 years. This surge has contributed significantly to pushing tens of millions more people into hunger, said the report.
According to the report, the economic effects of the pandemic, combined with global warming, caused a 40% increase in global food prices — the highest in over a decade.
"The statistics are staggering, but we must remember that these figures are made up of individual people facing unimaginable suffering. Even one person is too many," said Oxfam America's President and CEO Abby Maxman.
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