‘Tis the season to be jolly … as the world starves

We are a quarter of the way through the first century of the third millennium, we are the most technologically advanced we have ever been — there is software that can solve complex problems, run economies and even build houses — and yet people are still dying of hunger.

Two UN food agencies last week warned that millions of people around the world are facing famine, while the level of funding from many countries continues to fall. The joint report from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme said conflict and violence were driving acute food insecurity in the majority of countries identified as being at risk.

The agencies listed Palestine, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen — along with Haiti and Mali — as being of highest concern, “where populations face an imminent risk of catastrophic hunger.” Another group of nations, including Syria, were classified as “very high concern.”

It is a paradox that as the level of aid has fallen and more people are getting increasingly hungry, the world is getting fatter

Peter Harrison

World Food Programme Executive director Cindy McCain said: “We are on the brink of a completely preventable hunger catastrophe that threatens widespread starvation in multiple countries.” She warned that failure to act “will only drive further instability, migration and conflict.”

Note the words “completely preventable” — in short, this does not have to be the case.

We seem to miss the irony that we sit in front of our televisions stuffing our faces with excessively large meals while watching news reports on this apparently preventable global famine.

In recent years, starving children have been documented as being fed ground-up animal feed; some have even been seen eating sand or dirt to stave off hunger. Meanwhile, society continues to encourage those of us who are more fortunate to eat more than we need.

All around us are examples of gluttony. There are content creators who stream footage of themselves eating massive amounts of food, gagging as their bodies try to fend off the excess.

People in Yemen, South Sudan, Sudan and of course Gaza do not have the benefit of a food bank

Peter Harrison

Tonnes of food is wasted as restaurants offer all-you-can-eat buffets, throwing out huge amounts at the end of service, while supermarkets discard products that are close to their best-before date but still edible.

Marketing continues to tell us to eat the whole steak “and your dessert is free” or to “supersize” our meals for just a few cents more.

We don’t say no; we fail to respond because it seems harmless enough. But according to the World Food Programme, nearly a third of all the food produced globally each year is lost or wasted.

“If we could recover all the food we waste, we could feed every hungry person on the planet twice over,” the report states.

Women are suffering from hunger and malnourishment the most in nearly two-thirds of countries because, in many cases, they eat last and least, making sure their children and the men of the family are fed before them. Nearly 60 percent of all people hungry right now are women, while one in every three women suffer from anemia, a diet-related iron deficiency that can cause organ damage if left untreated.

Climate change deniers should be held to account. Their inactivity in the fight against global warming contributes to vast areas of land becoming parched and incapable of producing crops — and it is the poorest nations that suffer the most.

Developed countries have slashed their funding, leaving humanitarian relief “dangerously short” — as of last month, just $10.5 billion had been received out of the required $29 billion.

How are farmers supposed to produce crops or meat if the funding continues to fall dramatically short of what is needed?

In June, UNICEF published a report that said hunger impacted 8.2 percent of the world’s population — that is 673 million people — in 2024, down from 8.5 percent in 2023 and 8.7 percent in 2022.

But it warned that this slim progress was not consistent around the world, as hunger was still on the increase in subregions of Africa and Western Asia — with the latter including many parts of the Middle East.

The cut in funding has largely been down to a reduction in spending from the US, the UK, Germany and France, although other countries have announced reductions in their aid budgets as well.

The increasing sway to the populist right in Western politics is contributing to the continued fall in overseas aid. The figures do not back up claims of a migrant crisis, but the mindset remains.

It is a paradox that as the level of aid has fallen and more people are getting increasingly hungry, the world is getting fatter. The Lancet reported in March that, by 2050, more than half of all adults and a third of children, teenagers and young adults are predicted to be overweight or obese.

And as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, it is unlikely that the world’s waistlines will get any smaller.

But people are still starving to death in their hundreds of thousands.

It would also be remiss of me to ignore those in Western countries who go without meals so their children can eat or the highly educated professionals who have lost their jobs and are forced to go to food banks for the basics.

But, comparatively, these are not the norm — this is not to say they should be ignored, but let’s put this into perspective.

There is help in those countries that have reduced their aid funding — it is barely adequate but it is still help. People in Yemen, South Sudan, Sudan and of course Gaza do not have the benefit of a food bank.

It may seem overly simplistic, but as the world seemingly becomes more self-serving and less compassionate, those who are less fortunate will fall foul of factors that are either manageable or completely avoidable.

If you live in a developed country, there is food available, while eating healthily does not have to be expensive — it is not easy but it is not beyond the realms of possibility. A sack of potatoes in the UK might not be as cheap as it was, but it is still affordable and, moreover, available.

If you live in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan or Yemen, the availability of food is largely dependent on external factors — factors with guns, factors with global sway and factors with money and their own, some might say self-serving, plans.

• Peter Harrison is a senior editor at Arab News in the Dubai office. He has covered the Middle East for more than 15 years. X: @PhotoPJHarrison