However, starvation is not the only issue faced by children. As UNICEF warns “Afghanistan was already one of the toughest places on earth to be a child. Right now, the situation is desperate.” The situation deteriorates quickly as the country is on a brink of famine.

The crisis has especially affected women and girls, who face disproportionally greater obstacles, including to obtaining food, health care, and financial resources. As the U.N. warns: “The Taliban bans that are keeping women from most paid jobs have hit households in which women were the main earners the hardest. Even in areas in which women are still allowed to work – such as education and health care – they may be unable to comply with Taliban requirements for a male family member to escort women to and from work.”

Recent weeks have seen yet another trend: families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories. Indeed, in November 2021, UNICEF reported that child marriage is at increase in Afghanistan.

Some of these girls will become child brides. Despite the fact that the law prohibits marrying children under 15 (and still below the internationally recommended standard of 18), child marriage is widely practiced in Afghanistan. Child marriage has significant effect upon girls. According to research, child marriage has devastating consequences on a girl’s health. Child marriage are also a major violation of their human rights and can sometimes amount to a form of modern day slavery. While poverty may drive child marriage, child marriage traps girls in a cycle of poverty. Child marriage further puts girls at risk of physical and sexual abuse.

Some of the girls will be turned into child laborers. Save the Children research into the issue suggests that in Afghanistan, and a few other countries, children are not returning to school because of child labor, child marriage and financial hardship, which have only worsened with the pandemic. The current crisis will only exacerbate the situation. Furthermore, girls in secondary education have not been allowed back to school since the Taliban took over.

The issue of nearing famine in Afghanistan requires an urgent response. However, considering U.N. and unilateral sanctions in place, it is unlikely that this will change. In August, the Treasury Department issued general licenses allowing some actors to engage in transactions with the Taliban to allow for the provision of humanitarian assistance. However, the sanctions in place continue to cause hesitation and confusion among many donors. Governments and international organizations must work together to address this ever-growing man-made crisis. The people of Afghanistan cannot be left to starve. Afghan girls cannot be sacrificed.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab

Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. Ochab works on the topic of genocide, with specific focus on the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities around the world, with main projects including the Daesh genocide in Syria and Iraq, Boko Haram atrocities in West Africa, the situation of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and of the Uyghurs in China. Ochab has written over 30 reports for the UN (including Universal Periodic Review reports) and has made oral and written submissions at the Human Rights Council, the UN Forum on Minority Issues, PACE and other international and regional fora. Ochab authored the initiative and proposal to establish the UN International Day Commemorating Victims and Survivors of Religious Persecution. The initiative has led to the establishment of the UN International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief on August 22. Follow @EwelinaUO

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2021/11/25/afghan-girls-being-exchanged-for-food-as-famine-nears/?sh=28c7e5295e1f

The post Afghan Girls Being Exchanged For Food As Famine Nears first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Congolese residents of Goma arrive in Rwanda Sunday after fleeing from Mount Nyiragongo volcano as it erupted over Goma. Photo by Eugene Uwimana/EPA-EFE

Congolese residents of Goma arrive in Rwand Sunday after fleeing from Mount Nyiragongo volcano as it erupted over Goma Saturday. Photo by Eugene Uwimana/EPA-EFE

May 25 (UPI) — The search continued Tuesday for more than 100 children missing since the Mount Nyiragongo volcano eruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the eastern DRC erupted Saturday evening, with the lava flowing through the northern district of Goma, flattening hundreds of homes and killing more than 30 people, according to the BBC’s latest death toll.

The destruction has left parents desperately searching through the rubble for their missing children while the Red Cross and government officials try to reunite families, the BBC reported Tuesday.

The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said in a statement Sunday more than 170 children were feared to be missing with 150 of them separated from their families as thousands who had been evacuated returned to the DRC amid concern their homes would be damaged and utilities disrupted.

Meanwhile, a 5.3-magnitude earthquake was among a series of quakes to hit western Rwanda’s Rubavu district bordering the east DRC Tuesday morning where Congolese residents had fled to escape the Mount Nyiragongo volcanic eruption in Goma, Xinhua reported.

The earthquakes have ripped through houses, schools, and several roads, Rubava Mayor Gilbert Habyarimana told Xinhua, prompting several families to flee their homes out of fear they could cave in on them if there is a major earthquake.

The Mount Nyiragongo volcano is one of the largest in the world. Saturday’s eruption was the last large eruption since a 2002 eruption that killed 250 people and displaced thousands, CNN reported.

Source: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2021/05/25/Democratic-Republic-of-Congo-Goma-volcano-children-missing-Rwanda-earthquakes/1501621970191/?ur3=1

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PARIS (AP) — 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 study from the Standing Together for Nutrition Consortium draws on economic and nutrition data gathered this year as well as targeted phone surveys. Saskia Osendarp, who led the research, estimates an additional 11.9 million children — most in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — will suffer from stunting and wasting, the most severe forms of malnutrition.

Women who are pregnant now “will deliver children who are already malnourished at birth, and these children are disadvantaged from the very start,” said Osendarp, executive director of the Micronutrient Forum. “An entire generation is at stake.”

The fight against malnutrition had been an unheralded global success until the coronavirus pandemic struck.

“It may seem like it’s a problem that is always with us but the numbers were going down prior to COVID,” said Lawrence Haddad, executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. “Ten years of progress eliminated in 9 to 10 months.”

Before the pandemic, the number of stunted children declined globally each year, from 199.5 million in 2000 to 144 million in 2019. The number of children suffering from wasting stood at 54 million in 2010 and had dropped to 47 million last year. It’s expected to rise again to 2010 levels, according to the study.

The research was released at the start of a year-long effort to raise money against malnutrition. Around $3 billion was announced, though some of that includes prior commitments. Pakistan, which has some of the world’s most widespread malnutrition, pledged to spend $2.2 billion by 2025.

The consortium includes the World Bank, World Food Program, UNICEF, and USAID as well as private health foundations and universities. UNICEF pledged to spend $700 million on nutrition programs annually over the next five years, $224 million more than it has spent over the past five years.

Haddad said the next step is holding governments accountable for their promises, especially those whose citizens suffer the most from malnutrition.

“A lot of hunger is about governance,” he said. He added that the pandemic makes the benefits of nutrition clear because malnutrition leaves the body vulnerable to all kinds of disease, including coronavirus. “Nutrition is everyone’s best bet until the vaccine arrives.”

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Follow AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Source: https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-africa-nutrition-coronavirus-pandemic-0e2a17d63163d8558d203b2824a844fe

The post Hunger study predicts 168,000 pandemic-linked child deaths first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Lea Beaudry, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist in Honduras, recently spoke with Eitan Peled, Child Migration & Protection Program Manager for UNICEF USA, about how COVID-19 has created new dangers and complications for already vulnerable children and families in the country and how UNICEF has had to innovate and change course on the ground to deliver support and services.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Please tell us a little bit about your role with UNICEF Honduras.

LEA BEAUDRY: I manage a team of four fabulous child protection officers. We work on violence prevention and interruption strategies within the home, within communities and within schools, on juvenile justice and a number of other programs. And we focus on strengthening child protection systems — ensuring that state authorities are providing good protection services and reaching every Honduran child, even the most vulnerable.

A key part of our child protection programming is working to protect migrant children and families throughout their journey. We work with Honduran consular offices throughout the region to make sure migrants have access to services, that they know their rights and if they are victims of a crime they can report it. We work closely with our colleagues at UNICEF Mexico, other NGOs, etc. — there is a whole network of partners working in the region, working together to protect migrants along the migratory routes, making sure they have the services they need.

And we protect children upon their return — because so many are ultimately deported — making sure returning migrants have access to emergency mental health services, to help them deal with the scary circumstances they likely faced on their journey. And we support their reintegration back into society — such as helping them reenroll in school.

Can you explain what prompts so many children and families to flee their homes, even now, in a pandemic?

LEA BEAUDRY: There are exceedingly high rates of violence and abuse against children in Honduras. We conducted a national survey with our partners in 2017, and we found that 44 percent of girls and 37 percent of boys were victims of physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse. Often it is related to gang violence. Adolescents are especially at risk of violent death — 4,844 adolescent girls and boys were murdered here between 2010 and 2018. That is two kids murdered every day in our country. And because of the pandemic, many are now quarantined with their abusers.

Sisters in Potrerillos, Cortés, Honduras © UNICEF/UN0231994/ZEHBRAUSKAS

It’s the widespread violence that compels these kids and families to flee north. Women with abusive husbands or boyfriends take their children and run. The hope is that there will be a better chance of making it, of surviving, of having access to better education, etc. The Hondurans who flee really see Mexico and the U.S. as lands of opportunity.

So, while we understand their decision to leave, the goal of our violence prevention programming is to create a scenario in which the families don’t have to flee in the first place.

And many of those who flee end up back in Honduras…

LEA BEAUDRY: Yes. Between 2014 and 2018, there were over 300,000 deportations back to Honduras, including about 44,000 children. They were deported after attempting to migrate north to the U.S. or Mexico. Our work supporting returning migrants is intensifying now. The pandemic is making everything more complicated, and more urgent. People are still trying to migrate north, despite the pandemic. That is how desperate the situation is for so many families.

“Like before, many children are leaving Honduras unaccompanied, making their way north only to be turned away.”

And it’s gotten harder to leave, so they are taking irregular routes, slipping through the country’s blind spots. They are relying more on human smugglers, or coyotes, many of whom are connected to criminal networks, and the risk of being trafficked is very real. And like before, many children are leaving Honduras unaccompanied, making their way north only to be turned away.

Can you walk us through the process — what happens to children when they are deported — and speak to the role that UNICEF plays?

LEA BEAUDRY: Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has basically stopped processing asylum cases and is engaging in rapid deportations, sending kids back almost immediately.

This is where the pandemic has really had an impact. Before, unaccompanied children would be processed by various U.S. agencies as they go through the asylum process. Now they are being remitted immediately back to Honduras. This makes it very difficult to coordinate protections. There is also very little advance notice that these kids are coming in.

Honduras needs you, reads the mural outside the UNICEF-supported Belén Center for Migrant Children and Families in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.  © PHOTO BY GABRIELA ARIAS/UNICEF USA

When a child is deported, the consulate offices are supposed to alert the National Child Protection Agency in Honduras that a child is en route, so that someone from the agency can meet the child at the airport. But we’ve had situations where a child arrives at the airport and the agency wasn’t aware they were coming. So we have to scramble to get some support lined up for that child. We work with a network of civil society organizations in Honduras who help us with these ad hoc cases.

Their first stop upon returning is the Belén Center for Migrant Children and Families in San Pedro Sula, on the north coast. At Belén, the child is given a rapid test for COVID-19 — this is standard procedure for all returning migrants — and then placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine, also standard, at one of the facilities the government has set up for this purpose. UNICEF is working with the government to ensure these spaces are child-friendly.

How so?

LEA BEAUDRY: Well, these kids in many cases have been on the move for weeks or months even, and now they are in quarantine. They can’t talk to their families, and they don’t have any possessions, nothing to do or play with. We work to ease their anxiety and their stress — we give them toys, a chance to play sports, engage in recreational activities. We also make sure they get the health care they need. We make sure the child gets a psychological evaluation and a medical evaluation and is seen by a counselor.

Teenagers discuss their journey from Central America at a UNICEF-supported shelter for unaccompanied migrant adolescents in Tijuana, Mexico.  © UNICEF/UN0284712/BINDRA

And we work to get a better sense of why that girl or boy migrated to the U.S. in the first place. We determine whether there is a living family member in Honduras who could legally take charge of that girl or boy. We figure out what conditions in his home community may have prompted the decision to leave — maybe a gang was trying to recruit him, in which case it is obviously not safe for them to go home. We see if maybe the child can be relocated to a family member in another part of the country. We look into possibilities for regional relocation.

Even with testing and the mandatory quarantine, there is this fear that returning migrants are bringing COVID-19 back with them, correct?

LEA BEAUDRY: Unfortunately yes. They are being viewed with greater suspicion by their own communities. There is a stigma, an assumption that if you have been up north, then you must be infected with the virus. We are working to dispel those misconceptions — about how the virus is spread, and also how to contain it — through our public awareness campaigns. The UNICEF U-Report mobile platform and chatbot have helped reach a lot of people in Honduras with critical information.

“Trapped,” a digital illustration by Diana, a young artist and blogger from Honduras, part of a series for UNICEF’s Voices of Youth. “If you are a victim of abuse, do not be afraid to speak,” Diana wrote in a May 15, 2020 post for the website.   © UNICEF/UNI331366/

The risk of being infected by the virus while on the move is real, of course, though…

LEA BEAUDRY: True. The migrant shelters in Mexico are very crowded, and physical distancing is impossible. So that puts them at increased risk of contracting coronavirus — not only the migrants, the children and families, but also the child protective personnel who work in these protection sectors. It’s a very difficult situation. And when they come back, they are coming back to a country with a collapsed health care system. All hospitals in Honduras are beyond capacity treating COVID patients. They’re turning away many, many Hondurans who come looking for health care assistance.

So it’s frustrating for us, for UNICEF and a lot of our partners on the ground, to see that children keep being returned back to Honduras — a state that, overwhelmed by the COVID-19 crisis, is unable to provide basic protection and health care services.

“It’s frustrating that children keep being returned back to Honduras — a state that, overwhelmed by the COVID-19 crisis, is unable to provide basic protection and health care services.”

It’s also important to note that the country’s quarantine measures represent a very high risk for children and women who are stuck in abusive relationships. It’s been increasingly difficult for those who are stuck in these precarious positions, basically living under quarantine with their abusers, to have access to services. So we’ve been working with municipal governments to install child helplines. Kids can call in to the municipal office for child and adolescent services or send a WhatsApp message or a Facebook message and say, “Hey, I need help.”

These services have helped a lot of girls and boys who are living under a lot of stress. Schools have been closed since mid March. Kids are unable to leave their houses. They’re not seeing their friends. There’s a lot of tension within the family. So these child helplines have really become lifelines in accessing mental health services. We have a network of some 50 mental health workers, co-funded by municipal governments, that UNICEF has helped train, and they’re providing 24/7 support through these help lines.

Sounds like an amazing intervention. So what does mental health support from UNICEF look like without the in-person visits or group activities that would normally be taking place?

LEA BEAUDRY: Psychosocial support, a mental health intervention, involves a lot of game playing — games designed to reveal certain emotional indicators, such as aggressiveness, anxiety and sadness, and other effects of trauma. Psychosocial support works through these games. With the pandemic, we’ve turned to teaching parents how to carry out these activities with their kids at home. So, using the same child helplines that I mentioned earlier, we’re working on coaching moms and dads on these really easy-to-replicate games and how they can walk their kids through processing their emotions. We’ve also adapted the methodology to be able to reach the kids who are in the temporary quarantine shelters for two weeks. We work with the health care professionals who have access to those centers and we teach them these same psychosocial support skills and games so they implement them with the kids, give them a bit of mental health support and make them feel better, less anxious and less stressed by their situation.

You are dealing with some very harrowing circumstances, clearly. What gives you hope?

LEA BEAUDRY: I would say the essential workers and their heroic efforts to provide the basic healthcare, food, protection to the most vulnerable. In Honduras, we’re seeing fantastic health professionals doing their best, social workers, essential staff, but also community workers. We work with a lot of community leaders and organizations and they are really banding together to provide food, mental health support and protective shelter to the most vulnerable families, migrants and displaced populations. They are showing tremendous resilience. That gives me hope that together we can beat this crisis, and we can come back stronger and hopefully more united.

For those who are reading this and want to help, what can they do?

LEA BEAUDRY: I would urge them to lobby your government that now is not a good time to be returning children back to Honduras — or to Central America, for that matter. Talk to your friends and families about the dangers that migrants face in transit and once they return back home. I think the more people are aware, the more collective effort there will be to ensure that these children are not returned if their lives are at risk, and to improve services for migrants at every step.

So ask elected officials to stop deporting kids to unsafe places.

LEA BEAUDRY: Yes.

And give to UNICEF! Because these programs need funding. 

LEA BEAUDRY: Absolutely.

Support UNICEF’s efforts to save and protect kids no matter where they live or where they are from.

Maryanne Murray Buechner

The post Inside Look: How COVID-19 Is Deepening The Migrant Crisis In Honduras first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Issa Nasser, a 7-month-old Yemeni child, was suffering from severe malnutrition last week.

“I don’t have anything to give him,” his father, a local fisherman, told The Associated Press.

This week, Nasser is dead – one of thousands of children expected to die of starvation this year in Yemen.

Seven-month-old Issa Ibrahim Nasser brought to a clinic in Deir Al-Hassi, Yemen, in June. (AP Photo/Issa Al-Rajhi)

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The war-torn country is on the brink of a massive famine as donations dry up amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The spread of disease, coupled with an ongoing five-year civil war between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed pro-government forces, is creating the perfect storm for a massive humanitarian crisis, according to UNICEF Yemen’s chief of communication Bismarck Swangin.

“Whilst the criteria to declare a famine have not been met, there is widespread and serious malnutrition, and children are continuing to die on a daily basis,” Swangin told Fox News. “The arrival of COVID-19 has made a difficult situation even worse.”

UNICEF has reported the number of malnourished children could increase to 2.4 million without further international intervention.

Swangin added that social-distancing measures, along with fear of getting sick, created new challenges for hunger response services aimed at reaching mothers and their children.

Issa Ibrahim Nasser weighed less than 10 pounds last month. (AP Photo/Issa Al-Rajhi)

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With 80 percent of Yemen’s population relying on some form of international aid for survival, global attention to the situation has been critical for gathering monetary and humanitarian support.

In June, the United Nations and Saudi Arabia held a donation drive for Yemen, raising $1.35 billion in aid money. The number was half of what U.N. member states pledged last year and includes only a fraction of the money Yemen needs to battle the spread of COVID-19.

AS U.S. CORONAVIRUS CASES GROW, DOCTORS AND NURSES FEAR PPE SHORTAGE

While Yemen has been reporting only around 1,300 cases of coronavirus, the true extent of the outbreak likely has been much worse, analysts warned. Limited testing capabilities and access to medical facilities made it difficult to gauge the gravity of the situation.

Nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] have been operating around the clock in Yemen, tasked with balancing nutrition needs of the population while avoiding the inevitable spread of COVID-19.

Hundreds of children have suffered from acute severe malnutrition because of poverty and grinding conflict in Yemen. (AP Photo/Issa Al-Rajhi)

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“Yemen will be slammed by the virus as it takes root because of the weakened immune systems, malnourishment, and a prolonged state of poor health,” said Steve Gumaer, the president of Partners Relief & Development, an international grassroots charity set to distribute food this week in the country.

While many larger NGOs and the United Nations have seen a decrease in donations, Gumaer was experiencing the opposite. He attributed the rise in funds to people feeling more connected to world issues, such as the humanitarian crisis Yemen has faced.

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Gumaer said he’d speak with his partners in Yemen daily and reiterated the need for international attention to the extremely vulnerable civilian population.

“Yemen can’t handle this crisis alone,” Gumaer added.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/yemen-coronavirus-children-starvation-unicef

The post Millions of Yemen’s children face starvation as coronavirus outbreak worsens, UNICEF warns first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A global measles crisis caused more than 140,000 deaths last year, with data showing the number of cases reported so far this year is three times higher than at the same stage in 2018.

Measles infected nearly 10 million people last year and killed 140,000, mostly children, as devastating outbreaks of the viral disease hit every region of the world, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.

In figures described by its director-general as “an outrage”, the WHO said most of the 2018 measles deaths were in children under five years old who had not been vaccinated.

“The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world’s most vulnerable children,” said the WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The picture for 2019 is even worse, the WHO said, with provisional data up to November showing a three-fold increase compared with the same period in 2018.

The United States has already reported its highest number of measles cases in 25 years in 2019, while Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Great Britain lost their WHO “measles-free” status in 2018 after suffering large outbreaks.

An ongoing outbreak of measles in Samoa has infected more than 4,200 people and killed more than 60.

Globally, measles vaccination rates have stagnated for almost a decade, the WHO said.

It and the UNICEF children’s fund say that in 2018, around 86 percent of children got the first dose of measles vaccine through their country’s routine vaccination services, and fewer than 70 percent got the second dose recommended to fully protect them from measles infection.

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Around 20 million Yemenis are food insecure, UN agencies said on Saturday, adding the conflict ravaging the impoverished country was the key driver behind rising hunger levels.

“As many as 20 million Yemenis are food insecure in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” a joint statement by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the children’s fund Unicef and the World Food Programme (WFP) said.

“Already 15.9 million people wake up hungry” in Yemen, it said, citing an analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a food security survey.

According to the IPC – whose analysis is necessary to decide whether to declare famine in countries – the 20 million people facing “severe acute food insecurity” represent 67 per cent of Yemen’s population.

“What the IPC tells us is alarming,” said Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.

WFP head David Beasley said the analysis “is an alarm bell that shows hunger is rising”.

“We need a massive increase in aid and sustained access to all areas in Yemen in order to rescue millions of Yemenis. If we don’t, we will lose an entire generation of children to hunger,” he warned.

A WFP spokesman said the organisation aims to scale up its support programme in Yemen from the current level of 7-8 million people to reach 10 million by the end of December and 12 million by end January.

“This scale-up is an ambitious undertaking for WFP, which will demand massive resources both logistical and financial,” said Herve Verhoosel. “WFP has enough food stocks in country for now but will need US$152 million a month to sustain its scale-up into next year.”

The world’s worst humanitarian crisis spiraled in Yemen after a Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive to support the government against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in March 2015.

It has killed at least 10,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation.

The latest report comes as Yemeni government representatives and a rebel delegation were holding UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden.

The armed conflict was at the top of a list of the “key drivers of food insecurity”, which has been further exacerbated by a protracted economic crisis in the impoverished Gulf Peninsula country.

Yemen’s finances have been devastated by the conflict, with the World Bank reporting the economy has contracted by around 50 per cent since 2015.

Unemployment is running at over 30 per cent and inflation is projected at around 42 per cent, while the majority of state employees are not paid.

A slide in the value of the riyal also has caused food prices in the famine-threatened country to soar.

“A large proportion of the population, even in more stable areas, cannot access basic food commodities because food prices have jumped by 150 per cent compared to pre-crisis levels,” the statement said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: 20 million at risk of famine in Yemen

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Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/2177094/yemen-20-million-people-are-risk-famine-fighting-continues

[Disclaimer]

The post In Yemen, 20 million people are at risk of famine as fighting continues first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

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Germany’s Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Relief) aid organization published the Global Hunger Index (GHI) in Berlin Thursday, warning that gains made since 2000 have gone into reverse, with 821 million people, many of them children, undernourished.

Zero hunger by 2030 is one of 17 UN-agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Data from 119 countries, including child stunting, was used to calculate the placing of each nation on the GHI scale.

“Without political solutions the battle [against hunger] will not be won,” Welthungerhilfe President Bärbel Dieckmann said, adding that the African Union, the UN and the EU were primarily responsible, not non-governmental organizations.

Read more: Land losses threaten indigenous communities

Data on undernourishment, child wasting, stunting and mortality, which last decade showed average improvements, began receding early last year, she said.

“And this is mainly due to war zones: where there are armed conflicts and some areas that are suffering massively from the consequences of climate change,” Dieckmann told DW, referring to Yemen and Syria as examples of war-induced food shortages and refuge exodus.

Hunger double in war zones

Hunger was twice as prevalent in war-torn countries, she concluded. Drought in eastern Africa, once at 10-yearly intervals, now struck every two years. Corruption and poor governance were also factors.

Worst-placed on the GHI hunger severity indexwas the Central African Republic – where inter-militia conflict lingers despite a French-led UN intervention – followed by Madagascar, Chad, Zambia and war-torn Yemen.

Sixteen nations exhibiting no improvements and even regressive trends were identified in the data sets from 2016 and 2017 analyzed by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Irish entity Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, which is based in Bonn alongside numerous UN agencies including its climate secretariat.

Strong improvements in tackling hunger were, however, recorded in Angola, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Myanmar, said the authors of the GHI report.

Child mortality and undernourishment due to insufficient calorific intake prevailed in Africa south of the Sahara. South Asia exhibited stunting and wasting among children under five, in part due to lack of essential vitamins and minerals, the report concluded.

Planet prolific enough, says minister

Gerd Müller, federal development aid minister and Bavarian conservative in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet, the resurgence in world hunger was a “scandal because our planet has the potential to feed all people.”

Opposition parties in Germany’s Bundestag parliament – the Greens, the ex-communist Left, and the FDP liberals – asserted that Merkel’s government shared blame for hunger severity worldwide.

Example Rukban

Thursday’s report coincided with mounting hunger – and two child deaths due to lacking medical care – among 40,000 people stranded in a camp at Rukban in southeastern Syria near Jordan and close to a border triangle with Iraq.

Besieging Syrian government forces had recently cut off all roads used for aid deliveries to Rukban, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that a rebel group had failed to leave the camp under a previous deal.

Relief workers said UN agencies were pressing Jordan – already burdened by past refugee influxes – to allow aid deliveries across its border to stave off suffering.

Real starvation “could explode,” said the camp’s civic affairs spokesman, Abu Abdullah in a phone call to Reuters.

UNICEF regional director Geert Cappelaera said the lives of thousands of children at Rukban were at risk “especially when temperatures dip below freezing point in the harsh desert conditions.”

ipj/ng (dpa, AFP, KNA, epd, Reuters)

Source: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3550530

The post Global hunger relief back-tracking, especially in war zones first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

This file picture taken Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017, shows an overview of the informal Rukban camp, between the Jordan and Syria borders AP Photo/ Raad Adayleh, File

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