Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

António Guterres Warns of an “Unprecedented Wave of Hunger and Destitution”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday at a press conference to launch the latest report on the conflict’s impacts on food security, energy, and financing.
June 9, 2022
Wave of Hunger and Destitution

Three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine , the UN Secretary General denounced on Wednesday and said, “For those on the ground, every day brings new bloodshed and suffering.  And for people around the world, the war is threatening to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake.”.

During the conference  in New York of the second report of the Global Crisis Response Group (GCRG) dedicated to the effects of the conflict in Ukraine on the world’s population, António Guterres stressed that no country will be left out of this crisis that affects the cost of living of all people.

“Food prices are close to record highs. Fertilizer prices have more than doubled, sounding alarm bells everywhere. The lack of fertilizers will cause shortages to spread from corn and wheat to all staple crops, including rice, with a devastating impact on billions of people in Asia and South America ”, he predicted.

Among the main consequences of this crisis, António Guterres highlighted that record electricity prices are causing blackouts and fuel shortages globally, especially in Africa.

“And the financial situation continues to affect many developing countries, in addition to the risk of debt default and economic collapse due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the uneven recovery and the climate crisis,” he explained.

In the workplace, he highlighted that three out of five workers earn less than before the pandemic and that both countries and people cannot balance their budgets

“Instead, families around the world are forced to make unavoidable decisions: close their businesses, sell their livestock or take their children out of school”, a situation that especially affects women and girls who “often are the last to eat, and the first to stop as food shortages spread.”

In this section, he cited the forecasts of the World Food Programme, which estimates that the effects of the war could increase the number of people with serious food insecurity by 47 million in 2022, a worrying figure when the number of individuals with serious food insecurity has doubled. in the last two years.