The humanitarian agency, set up in 2016 by the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN), also warned that acute food insecurity has continued to worsen since 2017, the first year of its annual report into food crisis.
‘We must do everything we can to end this vicious cycle. There is no place for famine and starvation in the 21st century,’ said UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres.
He added that conflict and hunger need to be tackled jointly, as they reinforce one another.
Defined as any lack of food that threatens lives, livelihoods or both, acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse impacted at least 155 million people last year, the highest number in the report’s five-year existence.
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