UN agencies want urgent steps by regional gov’ts to push back food insecurity

A new report by five key United Nations agencies has painted a worrying picture on the likely state of food security and nutrition, going forward, in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It has called on governments to focus their investments and policies on pushing back against food insecurity and hunger in the region.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests a significant increase in hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition, in the coming years, the study says.

The United Nations’ FAO, UNICEF, PAHO, WFP and IFAD have said in their 2020 edition of the Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean that with the impact of the global pandemic coming at a time when food security had already been on the decline in the region, it is likely to grow even worse if policies are not urgently implemented to reverse the trend. The report focuses on the territories suffering the highest malnutrition rates, child overweight and stunting.

The multi-disciplinary study strongly suggests that, going forward, the region could experience a further significant increase in hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. It asserts that one in every five territories in the region is lagging behind on account of stunting or overweight in children under five years of age adding that the region faces the danger of having 67 million people impacted by hunger by 2030, a figure which it says does not include the likely repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unsurprisingly, the study says that the highest levels of nutrition-related deficiencies and abnormalities are to be found in rural areas (hinterland areas in the instance of Guyana) where the highest levels of poverty, low income, low schooling, a greater degree of informal employment and less access to services are to be found. By contrast, urban areas lag the furthest behind in the “overweight” area where higher incomes, lower poverty, greater access to services, and greater labour formality are to be found. The worst affected are the poorest in these urban areas.

Certain territories are simultaneously lagging behind due to both stunting and overweight; in general they tended to be more rural and have high levels of poverty. The pandemic, the study says, has hit the most vulnerable populations and territories particularly hard, where there are a greater number of informal jobs, incomes are lower and healthy food is scarce. The areas identified as lagging, especially due to malnutrition, would be the most affected.

And according to the study, the dire circumstances in “lagging territories,” gives rise to the need for the initiation of public policies that focus on those territories, and specifically on the most vulnerable populations. It says that addressing the problem of food and nutritional health in lagging territories requires multidimensional interventions that address the various causes of malnutrition in an integrated manner, and that offer a coordinated response across various dimensions.