Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday urged the youth to make greater efforts at boosting food and agricultural production to keep Bangladesh free from any worldwide famine and economic recession. “I would like to call upon our youth to take more initiatives for the production and processing of food items in their respective areas. If so, we'll be able to fulfill the local demand and also help other famine-hit countries,” she said. The premier was addressing the inauguration of the National Youth Day-2022 and the ceremony of National Youth Award-2022 at Osmani Memorial Auditorium through a virtual platform from her official residence Ganabhaban. She said different international organisations predicted that the worldwide famine might hit and many developed countries are also facing economic recession now. “To keep Bangladesh free from it (the brunt of any global famine and economic recession), every inch of our land should be cultivated. Besides, more steps should be taken to produce food items and processed food,” said Hasina. Read more: PM urges all to keep their houses clean to prevent dengue Noting that the youth is a very powerful force in Bangladesh, she said the soil of Bangladesh is very fertile and its biggest power is manpower. “We need to utilize this power,” she added. Zakir Hossain from Noakhali Sadar (1st position), Suraiya Farhana Reshma (2nd) from Sherpur of Bogura and Billal Miah (3rd) from Araihazar of Narayanganj received the National Youth Award under the successful self-employment category, while Rita Jasmine from Barishal Sadar (1st) and Abu Russell Huda (2nd) from Birol of Dinajpur received the award under the best youth organizer category. Besides, successful self-employed youths and youth organisers received the award under divisional quota. On behalf of the PM, State Minister for Youth and Sports Zahid Ahsan Russel handed over the award to the recipients. Every award winner was conferred with a crest, a certificate and a cheque of award money. Youth and Sports Secretary Mesbah Uddin, and two award recipients Zakir Hossain and Rita Jasmine spoke on the occasion. Read more: Sajeda Chowdhury’s death is a great loss, PM tells JS The prime minister said the country’s young people and students will have to keep pace with new technology and new inventions in science in the world. “We want to develop our youth as trained and skilled manpower making it fit for the 4th industrial revolution,” she added. She said her government has been establishing different institutions including, hi-tech parks, software parks, IT training and incubation centres, specialized labs and union digital centres so that the youths can get training there. “I believe that our youth are very talented and they would be able to show their competence in every job,” she added. Pointing to the young generation, Hasina said Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had presented a country for the nation and the country will have to be developed in the line with the spirit of the Liberation War. She said the youths who established themselves with self-employment have been keeping a huge contribution to the country’s economic progress. The PM said her government, coming to power in 1996, put emphasis on science, technical and vocational education and took different training programmes to develop the young generation. She said her government opened different sectors including television channels, radio, banks and insurances for the private entrepreneurs in a bid to create employment. So, the people now get its benefits, she added. The premier said the government is creating employment opportunities and generating jobs for the young generation. Read more: Bangladesh Navy deserves appreciation for ensuring maritime security while facing natural challenges: PM She said a process is on to prepare a database of the country trained youths. “If once the database is prepared, we can know who are employed or who are still unemployed and take step for creating job opportunities for the unemployed youths,” she added. PM Hasina said the government enacted the Youth Welfare Fund Act, 2016 and provided Tk 27.77 lakh as project-based donation to 14,668 youth organisations from the fund.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday reiterated that Bangladesh must grow food in every inch of land, go for savings and practice austerity to avert a famine that international organisations fear may grip the world in 2023.  “Utilise every inch of land for food production, we have to go for savings and practice austerity. I hope that all will maintain that course,” she said. The premier said this at the Flag raising ceremony of Head Quarters 71 Mechanized Brigade, 15 and 40 East Bengals (Mechanized), 9 and 11 Bangladesh Infantry Regiments (Mechanized) held at CMP Centre and School at Savar Cantonment.  She asked all to remain cautious as the international organisations are apprehending that 2023 will be the time of famine across the world.  “But Bangladesh must not fall victim of that famine. For that we have to produce foods in our own lands. We have to go for savings and practice austerity,” she told the ceremony in her virtual address from her official residence Ganabhaban. Hasina said that the aim of her government is to use every inch of uncultivated land for food production. She urged every institution to go for food production in whatever land it has.  She mentioned that developed countries are suffering severely due to Ukraine-Russia war and consequent sanctions as food scarcity is becoming evident there.  “Bangladesh is also in the same position. That blow is already being felt here. We are trying to control that,” she said. In this connection, she said the government has given cards to one crore people for distributing rice at Tk 30 per kg.  She also said the government is selling rice to 35 lakh vulnerable people at a price as low as Tk 15 per kg. “For those who are unable to work we are giving 25-40 kg of rice per month free of cost considering the size of their families,” she added. Army chief General S M Shafiuddin Ahmed also spoke at the programme. PM Hasina witnessed an orderly and graceful parade demonstrated by the members of different brigades and regiments of Bangladesh Army.

The United Nations says “famine is at the door” in Somalia with “concrete indications” famine will occur later this year in the southern Bay region. This falls just short of a formal famine declaration in Somalia as thousands are dying in a historic drought made worse by the effects of the war in Ukraine. U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told reporters that he was “shocked to my core these past few days” on a visit to Somalia in which he witnessed starving babies too weak to cry. A formal famine declaration is rare and a warning that too little help has come too late. At least 1 million people in Somalia have been displaced by the worst drought in decades, driven by climate change, that also affects the wider Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya. Famine is the extreme lack of food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases like cholera. A declaration means data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30% of children are acutely malnourished and over two people out of 10,000 are dying every day. Also read: UN warns 6 million Afghans at risk of famine as crises grow Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been described as a disaster for Somalia, which has suffered from a shortage of humanitarian aid as international donors focus on Europe. Somalia also sourced at least 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine before the war and has been hit hard by scarcity and the sharp rise in food prices. “Ukraine has occupied the narrative,” Griffiths said. Hungry families in Somalia have been staggering for days or weeks on foot through parched terrain in search of assistance. Many bury family members along the way. Even when they reach camps outside urban areas, they find little or no help. At one camp outside the capital, Mogadishu, Fadumo Abdi Aliyow showed The Associated Press the graves of her two small sons next to their makeshift home. Disease had overwhelmed their weakened bodies. One was 4. The other was eight months old. Also read: Ukraine's ports must be reopened to avert looming famine threat: UN “I wanted to die before them so they could bury me,” Aliyow said. Another resident of the camp of 1,800 families, Samey Adan Mohamed, said the last meal she and her eight children had was rice a day ago. Today they had only tea. Camps like theirs are ringed by death, bringing aid workers to tears. “I couldn’t get out of my head the tiny mounds of ground marking children’s graves,” UNICEF’s deputy regional director Rania Dagash said last week. “I’m from this region and I’ve never seen it so bad.” A formal famine declaration would bring desperately needed funding. But “tragically, by the time a famine is declared, it’s already too late,” the U.N. World Food Program has said. When famine was declared in parts of Somalia in 2011, the deaths of a quarter-million people were well underway. “This is not a repeat of the 2011 famine. It is much worse,” the U.N. humanitarian agency said last week. So far, at least 730 children have died in nutrition centers across Somalia, it said, and more than 213,000 people are at “imminent risk” of dying. “You feel like you’re looking at the face of death,” Mercy Corps CEO Tjada McKenna told the AP after visiting the badly hit city of Baidoa. There is not enough therapeutic food to treat the acutely malnourished, said McKenna, who saw many young children and pregnant women. “For every one person I saw, imagine all the people who couldn’t get that far. And so many people were arriving each day.” At the same time, aid funding has dropped more than 60% from the response to Somalia’s previous drought in 2017, USAID administrator Samantha Power said last week, noting a “degree of despair and devastation” not seen before in her career. The Horn of Africa region has seen four straight failed rainy seasons for the first time in well over four decades. The upcoming rainy season is also expected to fail. That endangers an estimated 20 million people in one of the world’s most impoverished and turbulent regions. “Sadly, our models show with a high degree of confidence that we are entering the fifth consecutive failed rainy season,” the director of the regional climate prediction center, Guleid Artan, has said. “In Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, we are on the brink of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.” The rainfall in this year’s failed March-to-May season was the lowest in the last six decades, Artan told the AP. Next year’s March-to-May season doesn’t look good either, he said, worrying that “this could be the seven-year drought, the biblical one.” Formal famine declarations are rare because data to meet the benchmarks often cannot be obtained because of conflict, poor infrastructure or politics. Governments can be wary of being associated with a term of such grim magnitude. Somalia's recently elected president, however, appointed a drought envoy in one of his first acts in office, which Griffiths called “impressive.” Because of the remote nature of Somalia’s drought, and with some hard-hit areas under the control of the al-Shabab extremist group which has been hostile to humanitarian efforts, no one knows how many people have died — or will in the months to come. Hundreds of calls from across Somalia, including from al-Shabab-controlled areas, come in daily to the Somali-run Radio Ergo. Some say no aid is available in camps. Others say water sources have run dry or lament the loss of millions of livestock that are the foundation of their health and wealth. “People don’t cry because they want their voice to be heard,” radio editor Leyla Mohamed told the AP. “But you can feel they are hurting, that they feel more than we can hear.”

Amid the soaring prices of food grains and the daily essentials, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir asked the ruling party to take a lesson from the famine in 1974 and take effective steps. "I would like to warn Mr Obaidul Quader (AL General Secretary) that you do not learn from history. There’s the famine in 1974 when the prices of food grains went up,” he said. Also read:BNP, Biplobi Workers Party agree to oust govt thru movement: Fakhrul Speaking at a discussion, the BNP leader also said the prices of food grains are increasing now again and people are going through immense sufferings. “At this time, you are not reading the writings on the walls and taking the necessary initiatives. There is now no point in saying all those contradictory things and making unguarded remarks," he said. Fakhrul urged the government to return to the democratic system and create a democratic atmosphere to avoid possible public wrath. “Let the people speak up and exercise their rights. Otherwise, you’ll have to face its consequences. You are threatening us with terrible consequences, but you saw such consequences in the past.” He also called upon the government to restore people’s rights, stop killings, forced disappearance, filing false cases and release Begum Khaleda Zia unconditionally. “Otherwise you will never get relief… we know they (AL) will not pay heed to it, and that is why their fall is inevitable.” Jatiya Ganatantrik Party (JAGPA) arranged the discussion programme at the Jatiya Press Club, marking the 41st death anniversary of Ziaur Rahman and the 5th death anniversary of party founder Shafiul Alam Pradhan. Fakhrul recalled that Awami League was there in power from 1972-1975 and that was the worst period in Bangladesh. “They never talked about their rule from 1972-75…hundreds of youth had to lose their lives at that time only for talking about democracy while there was widespread plundering and their failures led to a famine in 1974. They don’t talk about these things." The BNP leader said In his book on Bangladesh’s 1974 famine, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen stated that there were sufficient food grains but the then government could not create the kind of administration and structure needed to manage the food grains and deliver those to people and save them from starvation and death. “The second reason was their greed as they indulged in corruption, plundering and black marketing even at that crisis period.” “The same thing we’re seeing now. The minister himself is admitting that syndicates are raising the prices of essentials and food grains. Why are you there in the office when you can’t control the syndicates and take action against the corrupt persons?” he questioned. Also read: BNP reaches consensus with Ganosanghati Andolan on 'simultaneous’ movement:Fakhrul Fakhrul said the government is arresting the small wholesalers to stop hoarding of food and essential items, but the problem is not there. “Newspapers have unveiled the real problems that the rice price is growing as the big corporate houses are buying a huge amount of rice. It’s never possible to do it without the government’s indulgence and help. That is why we have repeatedly said the prices of rice and commodities have gone up not only for the government’s maneuvering but also for its direct involvement (in the process),” he said. Accusing the government of usurping power and hanging onto office by force, he said this regime will have to be ousted through united efforts. He said their party has started a process of forging unity among the political parties to ensure the fall of the Awami League government. Fakhrul said their party wants all the left and right-leaning political parties to get united to end the misrule of the current regime and restore democracy and people’s lost rights. He also accused the current government of destroying the electoral system and politicising all the state institutions. "No election will be held under this regime. Awami League must step down handing over power to a neutral government."

Some anti-liberation forces and so-called intellectuals want to see a famine in Bangladesh, said Agriculture Minister Abdur Razzaque on Friday. These people will be disappointed as there will be no famine nor any food shortage in the country, he said. The Minister said this while distributing food and clothes among the destitute ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr at Shyampur Model School premises in the capital on Friday. Also read: Work to ensure food safety round the year: Minister Awami League's Dhaka South unit organized the event. “We have all kinds of preparations to face any kind of crisis," he said. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has given utmost importance to food security, the minister added. Saying that the country has record food stock he declared, as long as Sheikh Hasina is in power, there will never be a food crisis or famine in the country. Also read: Food prices soar to record levels on Ukraine war disruptions The minister said the BNP-alliance also wanted to see Bangladesh's failure to deal with Covid-19. But the prime minister has handled the Corona situation very successfully. Relief and Social Welfare Secretary of Awami League Sujit Roy Nandi, Dhaka South Awami League General Secretary Humayun Kabir, Relief and Social Welfare Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Azahar also spoke at the event.

BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Tuesday voiced deep concern that the country is now experiencing a silent ‘famine' due to the soaring prices of essentials. Speaking at a rally in front of the Jatiya Press Club, he also alleged that the government has lost full control over the market due to the influence of the ruling party-backed business syndicates. “A genuine silent famine is now prevailing across the country. People are standing in queues behind the TBC trucks wearing masks. They’re collecting one litre of oil or some pulse or rice amid hassles and tussles,” the BNP leader said. Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal arranged the rally in front of the Jatiya Press Club protesting the unusual price hike of daily essentials. Fakhrul said the price of onion went up to Tk 10 per kg the day the commerce minister issued a warning of taking action if the prices of essential items were not reduced. “What does it mean? It means that this government has no control over the market.” The BNP leader alleged that the ruling party leaders are leading all the market and business syndicates and they are also indulging in extortion and bribery. READ: Let Khaleda come out of home if have courage: Fakhrul to govt “Whenever Awami League came to power they tried to make their own fortune using people as their pawns. The situation was the same from 1972 to 1975 and there was a famine in the country and millions of people died without food only because of their incompetence and corruption,” he observed. Fakhrul slammed the government for hiking the fuel oil and gas tariffs as she thought these moves also contributed to push up the prices of essentials.  He also trashed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s comment that the prices of daily essentials have gone up everywhere due to the Russia-Ukraine war. “I would like to ask her (PM) when did the Russia-Ukraine war start? How long have people been shouting about reducing the prices of oil, rice, pulses?” The BNP leader said the international organisations are saying that the number of poor people in Bangladesh has increased by two percent this year. Stating that if the trum fare goes up by four paisa in Kolkata, then Kolkata city will be closed, Fakhrul said, “They (AL) have been immensely torturing us for 14 years, but we can't resist it in that way. But we have to stop it.”  He also said there is no alternative to ousting the current government to stop all injustice and oppression, ensure foo for the poor people and get rid of the famine. “The country’s existence will be at stake if the current government stays in power for some more time. They’ve deliberately destroyed the judiciary, education system, politicised, administered the bureaucracy and created a breeding ground for corruption in the universities,” he observed. READ: BNP wants election under non-party govt like in 1991: Fakhrul Fakhrul urged the country’s people and political parties to get united to establish a government of people defeating the current ‘despotic’ regime.

As food and the means to buy it dwindled in a city under siege, the young mother felt she could do no more. She killed herself, unable to feed her children. In a Catholic church across town, flour and oil to make communion wafers will soon run out. And the flagship hospital in Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, wrestles with whether to give patients the expired medications that remain. Its soap and bleach are gone. A year of war and months of government-enforced deprivation have left the city of a half-million people with rapidly shrinking stocks of food, fuel, medicine and cash. In rural areas, life is even grimmer as thousands of people survive on wild cactus fruit or sell the meager aid they receive. Man-made famine, the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade, has begun. Despite the severing of almost all communication with the outside world, The Associated Press drew on a dozen interviews with people inside Mekele, along with internal aid documents, for the most detailed picture yet of life under the Ethiopian government’s blockade of the Tigray region’s 6 million people. Amid sputtering electricity supplies, Mekele is often lit by candles that many people can’t afford. Shops and streets are emptying, and cooking oil and baby formula are running out. People from rural areas and civil servants who have gone unpaid for months have swelled the ranks of beggars. People are thinner. Funeral announcements on the radio have increased. “The coming weeks will make or break the situation here,” said Mengstu Hailu, vice president for research at Mekele University, where the mother who killed herself worked. He told the AP about his colleague’s suicide last month as well as the deaths of two acquaintances from hunger and a death from lack of medication. “Are people going to die in the hundreds and thousands?” he asked. Read: 'I just cry': Dying of hunger in Ethiopia's blockaded Tigray Pleas from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and African nations for the warring sides to stop the fighting have failed, even as the U.S. threatens new sanctions targeting individuals in Africa’s second-most populous nation. Instead, a new offensive by Ethiopian and allied forces has begun in an attempt to crush the Tigray fighters who dominated the national government for nearly three decades before being sidelined by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Ethiopia is one of the top recipients of U.S. humanitarian aid. The government in Addis Ababa, fearing the assistance will end up supporting Tigray forces, imposed the blockade in June after the fighters retook much of Tigray, then brought the war into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. Hundreds of thousands are now displaced there, widening the humanitarian crisis. After the AP last month reported the first starvation deaths under the blockade, and the U.N. humanitarian chief called Ethiopia a “stain on our conscience,” the government expelled seven U.N. officials, accusing them of falsely inflating the scale of the crisis. The expulsions were “unprecedented and disturbing,” the U.S. said. Just 14% of needed aid has entered Tigray since the blockade began, according to the U.N., and almost no medicine at all. “There is no other way to define what is happening to the people of Tigray than by ethnic cleansing,” InterAction, an alliance of international aid groups, said this month of the conflict marked by mass detentions, expulsions and gang-rapes. “The Tigrayan population of 6 million face mass starvation now,” former U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock wrote in a separate statement. In response to questions, the spokesperson for the Ethiopian prime minister’s office, Billene Seyoum, again blamed Tigray forces for aid disruptions and asserted “the government has worked relentlessly to ensure humanitarian aid reaches those in need.” She did not say when basic services would be allowed to Tigray. At Tigray’s flagship Ayder referral hospital, Dr. Sintayehu Misgina, a surgeon and the vice chief medical director, watches in horror. Patients sometimes go without food, and haven’t had meat, eggs or milk since June. Fuel to run ambulances has run out. A diesel generator powers equipment for emergency surgeries only when fuel is available. Read: Ethiopia calls “all capable” citizens to fight in Tigray war “God have mercy for those who come when it’s off,” he said. No help is in sight. A World Health Organization staffer told Sintayehu there was nothing left to give, even though a warehouse in neighboring Afar was full of life-saving aid. Scores of badly malnourished and ill children have come to the hospital in recent weeks. Not all have survived. “There are no drugs,” said Mizan Wolde, the mother of a 5-year-old patient. Mehari Tesfa despaired for his 4-year-old daughter, who has a brain abscess and is wasting away. “It’s been three months since she came here,” he said. “She was doing OK, then the medication ceased. She is now taking only oxygen, nothing else.” Across Tigray, the number of children hospitalized for severe acute malnutrition has surged, according to the U.N. children’s agency — 18,600 from February to August, compared to 8,900 in 2020. The U.N. says hospitals outside of Mekele have run out of nutrition supplies to treat them. “According to colleagues in the medical and agricultural sector, hundreds (of people) are dying each day, that’s the estimation,” Mekele University lecturer Nahusenay Belay said. He said one acquaintance died from lack of diabetes medication, and a young relative in the city’s outskirts starved to death. “I’m surviving by the help of family and friends like anyone else,” he said. Prices for essential goods are spiking. The U.N. last week said cooking oil in Mekele had shot up more than 400% since June and diesel more than 600%. In the town of Shire, swamped by scores of thousands of displaced people, diesel was up 1,200%, flour 300% and salt more than 500%. The true toll of the deprivation in rural areas of the largely agricultural region is unknown as the lack of fuel prevents most travel. One internal aid document dated last month and seen by the AP described thousands of desperate people who had fled “trapped and starved communities” near the border with Eritrea, whose soldiers have been blamed for some of the worst atrocities of the war.  Raed: At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’ “Most are able to eat at least one meal per day, largely thanks to the availability of cactus fruit,” the document said. “The situation is likely to deteriorate after September when wild fruits are exhausted.” A document from another part of Tigray described “too many people to count” trying to sell items such as buckets and soap distributed by humanitarian groups. Some people walked straight from the distribution site to the roadside to sell. “They have no option as they needed the money to buy food to supplement the inadequate food rations,” the document stated, adding the forecast for famine is “terrifying.” A Catholic priest in Mekele, the Rev. Taum Berhane, described conditions echoing harsh tales from biblical times. Even before the war, parts of Tigray faced an invasion of desert locusts. Then hostile forces looted and burned crops and shot farmers’ animals. Now, the blockade means people are going hungry despite having money in the bank. “You see lactating mothers with no milk,” he said. “We see babies dying. I saw myself people eating leaves like goats.” While the church struggles to support camps for thousands of displaced people, “they are telling us, ‘Let us go back to our villages, even if there’s nothing there. It’s better to die at home.’” The Catholic bishop in the town of Adigrat told him eight children have died at the hospital there, he said. The priest, 70 years old and a diabetic, now watches his medication dwindle. His congregation’s spirits, too. With cash in Tigray running out, the collection plate is no longer passed at Mass. The bread for communion will be depleted soon. “Even if I survive, am I going to preach to a vacuum if all humans perish?” he asked. “The only hope is, to be frank, these people have to stop fighting and talk for sustainable peace.”

Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and in the country’s north, the U.N. humanitarian chief said, warning there’s a risk that hundreds of thousands of people or more will die. Mark Lowcock said the economy has been destroyed along with businesses, crops and farms and there are no banking or telecommunications services. “We are hearing of starvation-related deaths already,” he said in a statement Friday. “People need to wake up,” Lowcock said. “The international community needs to really step up, including through the provision of money.” Read: 'People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia's Tigray area No one knows how many thousands of civilians or combatants have been killed since months of political tensions between Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government exploded into war last November. Eritrea, a longtime Tigray enemy, teamed up with neighboring Ethiopia in the conflict. In late May, Lowcock painted a grim picture of Tigray since the war began, with an estimated 2 million people displaced, civilians killed and injured, rapes and other forms of “abhorrent sexual violence” widespread and systematic, and public and private infrastructure essential for civilians destroyed, including hospitals and agricultural land. “There are now hundreds of thousands of people in northern Ethiopia in famine conditions,” Lowcock said. “That’s the worse famine problem the world has seen for a decade, since a quarter of a million Somalis lost their lives in the famine there in 2011. This now has horrible echoes of the colossal tragedy in Ethiopia in 1984.” In the disastrous famine of 1984-85, about 2 million Africans died of starvation or famine-related ailments, about half of them in Ethiopia. “There is now a risk of a loss of life running into the hundreds of thousands or worse,” Lowcock said. Read: Amnesty report describes Axum massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray He said getting food and other humanitarian aid to all those in need is proving very difficult for aid agencies. The United Nations and the Ethiopian government have helped about 2 million people in recent months in northern Ethiopia, mainly in government-controlled areas, he said. But Lowcock said there are more than 1 million people in places controlled by Tigrayan opposition forces and “there have been deliberate, repeated, sustained attempts to prevent them getting food.” In addition, there are places controlled by the Eritreans and other places controlled by militia groups where it is extremely difficult to deliver aid, he said. “The access for aid workers is not there because of what men with guns and bombs are doing and what their political masters are telling them to do,” the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said. Read: 'Extreme urgent need': Starvation haunts Ethiopia's Tigray Lowcock said all the blockages need to be rolled back and the Eritreans, “who are responsible for a lot of this need to withdraw,” so aid can get through to those facing famine. “Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed needs to do what he said he was going to do and force the Eritreans to leave Ethiopia,” he said. Lowcock said leaders of the seven major industrialized nations -- the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Canada -- need to put the humanitarian crisis and threat of widespread famine in northern Ethiopia on the agenda of their summit from June 11-13 in Cornwall, England. “Everyone needs to understand that were there to be a colossal tragedy of the sort that happened in 1984 the consequences would reach far and last long,” he said.

Bangladesh needs to be self-reliant in food production as there will not be enough food that money can buy if a crisis or famine breaks out as a fallout of Covid-19. 

BNP on Wednesday alleged that people are facing a very tough time now as a 'silent famine' has been prevailing in the country due to the fallouts of coronavirus and floods.