COVID Crisis May Push 130 Million More People to the Brink of Starvation UN Humanitarian chief Says

Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefs the open video conference with Security Council members in connection with the Middle East (Syria) on 19 May 2020~ ***UN Photo by Loey Felipe***

Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock on 9 Jun said the response to the COVID-19 pandemic “must be proportionate to the scale of the problem we face,” and may require approximately 90 billion US dollars.

Addressing the annual ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment (HAS), Lowcock said that according to UN agencies, “the main measures of human development will all go backwards this year for first time since 1990” and “could signify the largest reversal in human development since records began,” and the crisis may push “as many as 60 million people into extreme poverty,” and “130 million more people to the brink of starvation, almost doubling last year’s figure.”

He said, “the spectre of mass and multiple famines looms.”

Lowcock said, “the cost of protecting the most vulnerable ten percent of people in the world’s poorest countries in this period of extreme crisis is about 90 billion dollars. That is a substantial sum, but it’s also affordable. It is equivalent, for example, to just one percent of the global stimulus package the world richest countries put in place to save the global economy.”

Also addressing the meeting, which was conducted via teleconference, UNICEF Excecutive Director Henrietta Fore said, “the longer the crisis lasts, the more the humantarian impacts grow on children’s health, nutrition, education and protection.”

In just a few short months, Fore continued, “COVID-19 and the efforts to contain its spread have laid bare existing inequities, vulnerabilities and weakness of national systems around the world, the result of decades of under investment in systems that need to support children futures.”

She said, “while the landscape has changed, children’s needs have not.”

For his part, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Qu Dongyu, said “the COVID-19 pandemic poses a clear and present danger to food security and nutrition, especially in the world’s most vulnerable communities. Our initial ongoing assessment tells us that almost all countries with existing food crises have seen food prices rising and wages dropping. This has reduced people’s access to food. We are also seeing the begining of production side issues impact on food availability. We are getting increasing reports that farmers are unable to access land for the harvesting and for the planting season.”

The HAS is a platform for discussing the activities and issues related to strengthening the coordination of the humanitarian assistance of the United Nations. It provides an opportunity for Member States, the United Nations system, development actors, the private sector and other humanitarian partners to discuss emerging and pressing humanitarian issues.

The theme for the HAS this year is “Reinforcing humanitarian assistance in the context of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations: taking action for people-centred solutions, strengthening effectiveness, respecting international humanitarian law and promoting the humanitarian principles.”

~UNIFEED