The U.N. delivered grim news on global food security Wednesday: 2.4 billion people didn’t have constant access to food last year, as many as 783 million faced hunger, and 148 million children suffered from stunted growth. Five U.N. agencies said in the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition report that while global hunger numbers stalled between 2021 and 2022 many places are facing deepening food crises. They pointed to Western Asia, the Caribbean and Africa, where 20% of the continent’s population is experiencing hunger, more than twice the global average. “Recovery from the global pandemic has been uneven, and the war in Ukraine has affected the nutritious food and healthy diets,” Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement. “This is the `new normal’ where climate change, conflict, and economic instability are pushing those on the margins even further from safety.” FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said the FAO food price index has been declining for about 15 months, but “food inflation has continued.” But he said not knowing if the deal that has enabled Ukraine to ship 32 metric tons of grain to world markets and is trying to overcome obstacles to Russian grain and fertilizer shipments will be renewed when it expires on July 17 “is not good for the markets.” UN warns its development goals for 2030 are in trouble and 575 million people will remain very poor If it isn’t renewed immediately “you will have a new spike for sure” in food prices, but how much and for how long will depend on how markets respond, he said. According to the report, people’s access to healthy diets has deteriorated across the world. More than 3.1 billion people – 42% of the global population – were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021, an increase of 134 million people compared to 2019, it said. Torero told a news conference launching the report that reducing the number of people eating unhealthy diets “is a big challenge, because it’s basically telling us that we have substantially to change the way we use our resources in the agricultural sector, in the agri-food system.” According to the latest research, he said, between 691 million and 783 million people were chronically undernourished in 2022, an average of 735 million which is 122 million more people than in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Eliminate legal barriers to women owning land: UN chief Torero said U.N. projections for 2030 indicate that 600 million people will still be suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2030, far from the U.N. development goal of achieving “Zero Hunger” by that date. In the report’s foreword, the heads of FAO, the World Food Program, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organization wrote that achieving Zero Hunger “poses a daunting challenge.” They called for redoubled efforts “to transform agri-food systems and leverage them” to reach the target. As for children, the report says they are continuing to suffer from malnutrition, with not only 148 million younger than 5 stunted but 45 million too thin for their height or “wasted,” while 37 million youngsters were overweight. Torero said the five agencies also looked at increased urbanization and found that people in rural and semi-urban areas are also consuming mass market products. “Normally, we used to believe that rural people will consume what they produce, but that’s not the case,” he said, explaining that in rural areas about 30% of the family’s food basket is purchased from the market, and in semi-urban and urban areas it is higher, which has implications for nutrition because of the consumption of more processed foods. WFP chief economist Arif Husain told reporters in a virtual briefing that in 2022 when the war in Ukraine was ongoing the food situation didn’t get worse because the donor community stepped up with about $14.2 billion, and the agency was able to provide aid to 160 million people, up from 97 million in 2019. Stop targeting truth, truth-tellers: UN Chief on World Press Freedom Day “My concern is that moving forward we are looking at huge funding cuts,” he said, citing WFP donations of just $4.2 billion by last week, 29% lower than at the same time last year.

Every single minute, the global hunger crisis is pushing one child into life-threatening, severe malnutrition, according to the UN Children's Fund UNICEF. It called for $1.2 billion to meet the urgent needs of eight million children at risk of death from severe wasting, mainly in African nations, such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and also Afghanistan and Haiti. The UN agency Thursday said the number of desperately hungry children suffering from severe wasting continued to grow. Between January and June, that number increased by well over 250,000, from 7.67 million to 7.93 million children.This comes as the price of ready-to-use food to treat severe wasting soared by 16 percent in recent weeks, owing to a sharp rise in the cost of raw ingredients. UNICEF said the price spike left up to 600,000 more children without access to life-saving treatment and at risk of death. Read: 1.6 million children stranded by floods in Bangladesh: UNICEF "We are now seeing the tinderbox of conditions for extreme levels of child wasting begin to catch fire," UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said. "Food aid is critical, but we cannot save starving children with bags of wheat. We need to reach these children now with therapeutic treatment before it is too late." Soaring food prices driven by the war in Ukraine, persistent drought due to climate change in some countries, at times combined with conflict, and the ongoing economic impact of Covid-19, are driving up food and nutrition insecurity worldwide, resulting in catastrophic levels of severe malnutrition in children under five. Read: Schools for over 168mn children globally shut for almost a full year: UNICEF Within the 15 countries highlighted as most at risk by UNICEF, the agency estimates that at least 40 million children are severely nutrition insecure, meaning they are not receiving the bare minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop in early childhood. Also, 21 million children are severely food insecure, meaning they lack access to enough food to meet minimum food needs, leaving them at high risk of severe wasting.

In Afghanistan, 1.1 million children under the age of 5 will likely face the most severe form of malnutrition this year, according to the U.N., as increasing numbers of hungry, wasting-away children are brought into hospital wards. U.N. and other aid agencies were able to stave off outright famine after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year, rolling out a massive emergency aid program that fed millions. But they are struggling to keep pace with relentlessly worsening conditions. Poverty is spiraling and making more Afghans in need of aid, global food prices are mounting from the war in Ukraine and promises of international funding so far are not coming through, according to an assessment report issued this month. As a result, the vulnerable are falling victim, including children but also mothers struggling to feed themselves along with their families. Nazia said she had lost four children to malnutrition — two daughters and two sons under 2 years old. “All four died due to financial problems and poverty,” the 30-year-old Nazia said. When her children fell ill, she didn’t have the money to treat them. Read: South Asia’s intense heat wave a ‘sign of things to come’ Nazia spoke to The Associated Press at Charakar Hospital in the northern province of Parwan, where she and her 7-month-old daughter were both being treated for malnutrition. Her husband is a day laborer but is also a drug addict and rarely brings in an income, she said. Like many Afghans, she uses only one name. UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, said 1.1 million children this year are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, nearly double the number in 2018 and up from just under 1 million last year. Severe wasting is the most lethal type of malnutrition, in which food is so lacking that a child’s immune system is compromised, according to UNICEF. They become vulnerable to multiple bouts of disease and eventually they become so weak they can’t absorb nutrients. The numbers of children under 5 being admitted into health facilities with severe acute malnutrition have steadily mounted, from 16,000 in March 2020 to 18,000 in March 2021, then leaping to 28,000 in March 2022, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, Mohamed Ag Ayoya, wrote in a tweet last week. Hit by one of its worst droughts in decades and torn by years of war, Afghanistan was already facing a hunger emergency; but the Taliban takeover in August threw the country into crisis. Many development agencies pulled out and international sanctions cut off billions in finances for the government, collapsing the economy.

Around 1 million Afghan children are projected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition over this year and could die without treatment, the UN warned Monday. Almost 10 million children across Afghanistan need humanitarian assistance to survive, Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore said. She added that an estimated 4.2 million children in Afghanistan are out of school, including more than 2.2 million girls. Approximately 435,000 children and women in the war-torn country, where the Taliban have taken power, are internally displaced, the UN agency said. READ: When the music stops: Afghan ‘happy place’ falls silent This is the grim reality facing Afghan children, and it remains so regardless of ongoing political developments and changes in government, Henrietta said. "We anticipate that the humanitarian needs of children and women will increase over the coming months amid a severe drought and consequent water scarcity, the devastating socioeconomic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the onset of winter." Urging the Taliban and other parties to ensure safety, the UN agency – responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide – called for a "timely and unfettered access to reach children in need wherever they are." Although many people fear retribution and are scrambling to flee the country, the Taliban have assured the security of foreign missions, international organisations, and aid agencies. "I would like to assure you that we will not allow anybody to do anything against you," spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in the group's first press conference since taking control of Afghanistan on August 15. READ: Afghan woman gives birth on US evacuation flight The group promised that it would respect women's rights "within the framework of Islamic law." "They are going to be working with us, shoulder-to-shoulder with us. The international community, if they have concerns, we would like to assure them that there's not going to be any discrimination against women, but, of course, within the frameworks that we have," he said.

Many workers of different industries in Bangladesh are victims of malnutrition and their productivity rate is likely to fall up to 20% due to the condition.   So, the workers' nutrition safety will have to be prioritised for the implementation of the government's Vision 2021 and 2041 and achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). Also read: 43 pc female RMG workers suffering from malnutrition Speakers said this at a partnership agreement signing ceremony between the Department of Labour and Switzerland-based Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) in the capital Monday. Moniruzzaman Bipul, portfolio lead of GAIN Bangladesh, said ensuring necessary nutrition for workers may increase their productivity rate up to 20%. "Only anaemia, caused by iron deficiency, is responsible for the reduction of productivity worth $500 crore in South Asia."

Speakers in a programme on Tuesday said that about 43 percent female workers at ready-made garments (RMG) sector are victim of malnutrition.

More than 10 million children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), northeast Nigeria, the Central Sahel, South Sudan and Yemen will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said. All of these countries and regions are experiencing "dire humanitarian crises" while also grappling with intensifying food insecurity, the coronavirus pandemic and, with the exception of the Central Sahel, "a looming famine," UNICEF said on Wednesday.

Canada’s Minister of International Development Karina Gould and Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Tuesday jointly launched a ‘Year of Action’ on nutrition, which will include a series of commitment-making moments.

Economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has set back decades of progress against the most severe forms of malnutrition and is likely to kill 168,000 children before any global recovery takes hold, according to a study released Monday by 30 international organizations.

The twin baby boys lay on a bed of woven palm leaves in a remote camp for displaced people in Yemen’s north, their collar bones and ribs visible. They cried loudly, twisting as if in pain, not from disease but from the hunger gnawing away at them.