Urgent humanitarian action is needed to save lives, build resilience and secure the future in 18 hotspots, including 17 countries, including Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe where acute hunger risks worsening from June to October 2024, warns WFP and FAO.
“The daunting prospects highlighted in this report should serve as a wake-up call to all of us. We need to spearhead the shift from responding to crises after they occur to more proactive anticipatory approaches, prevention and resilience building to help vulnerable communities cope with upcoming shocks,” says FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu.
On her part, Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director, said: “Once a famine is declared, it is too late – many people will have already starved to death. In Somalia in 2011, half of the quarter of a million people who died of hunger perished before famine was officially declared. The world failed to heed the warnings at the time and the repercussions were catastrophic. We must learn the lesson and act now to stop these hotspots from igniting a firestorm of hunger”.
