UN: $4.4B needed within weeks to stop hunger ‘catastrophe’

The United Nations needs $4.4 billion by the end of March to prevent catastrophic hunger and famine in South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, yet just $90 million has been collected so far, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday.

With over 20 million people at risk of starvation over the next six months and famine already declared in parts of South Sudan, “we are facing a tragedy,” Guterres said.

“We must avoid it becoming a catastrophe.”

Convening reporters for a briefing at the U.N. headquarters, Guterres amplified concerns that U.N. officials and humanitarian groups have expressed in recent weeks about the lack of food in the four nations. While they differ in many ways, their plights all are connected by a thread of violent conflict, Guterres noted. Drought is also a factor, particularly in Somalia.

Children’s agency UNICEF warned Tuesday that almost 1.4 million children are at “imminent risk of death” from acute malnutrition this year in the four countries. A day earlier, U.N. agencies and South Sudan’s government said more than 100,000 were experiencing famine in two counties in South Sudan, a nation where tens of thousands of people have died in a civil war that began in December 2013 and severe inflation has put food beyond the financial reach of many.

U.N. and food organizations define famine as when more than 30 per cent of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition and mortality rates are two or more deaths per 10,000 people every day, among other criteria.

Beyond the counties experiencing famine now, “millions of people are barely surviving in the space between malnutrition and death,” Guterres said.

In Nigeria, a seven-year uprising by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people and driven 2.6 million from their homes. A U.N. humanitarian co-ordinator last month said malnutrition in the nation's northeast is so pronounced that some adults are too weak to walk and some communities have lost all their toddlers.

Somalia, which faced famine in 20102011, is experiencing widespread drought and has endured years of conflict and attacks by Islamic militants of the al-Shabab group. But the country is taking steps toward having its first fully functioning central government in a quarter-century.