Fighting hunger when food isn't scarce

A UN report titled, 'Global Humanitarian Overview 2024,' says hunger is not inevitable, but it is almost always manmade. And the manmade reasons for hunger according that report include armed conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes, poverty and inequality. These are factors that are glaringly obvious to be missed as the causes of global hunger. Armed conflicts alone forced some 117 million people to go hungry in 2022, adds that report. In recent years, extreme weather conditions triggered by climate change have destroyed ecosystems in different parts of the world resulting in lost sources of livelihood for millions. The year 2022, for example, saw 258 million people facing acute food insecurity in 58 countries/territories. Notably, in 2021, 193 million people in 53 countries/territories were food-insecure. That means just within the span of a year, 65 million more (people) lost their livelihoods to join the ranks of the food-insecure. And considering the trend, the outlook for 2023-24 does not seem to be any better. Going by World Food Programme data, 333 million people in 78 countries were acutely food-insecure in 2023. By April 2024, as projected by the report, 18 out of 22 countries/territories are at risk of becoming, what it said, Hunger Hotspots. That is another way of saying that the populations of those places are already facing or going to face severe food insecurity. And such places include the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) with special mention to Gaza, Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan and South Sudan. Notably, the OPT, especially, Gaza, is a glaring example of how extreme famine condition can be deliberately forced upon a population by another country showing utter disregard to, even contempt of, international law and humanity. And it is also an unprecedented case of the entire world watching, as though, in a state of paralysis as an occupying power uses extreme hunger as a weapon of war against a powerless, unarmed people including children, just-born babies, pregnant women, not to mention millions of others, young or old, just out of hatred. So, how does the world community address this kind of manmade hunger? The past wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia and the ongoing ones in the OPT, Syria and Sudan are deliberately created and are of political in nature. So, solving such instances of food insecurity and famines should be given the highest priority. Now, seeing the helplessness of the UN and its relief agencies before the wrath of an occupying power, question arises as to how in the future the world community is going to address politically-induced food insecurity and hunger.

So, addressing the issue of hunger is not as simple as distributing food to the places where hungry people live. International bodies involved in the task would also be required to enhance their political capacity to deliver foods to some hotspots of hunger.

Basically, the issue of hunger boils down to people's access to food. True, natural as well as artificially created conditions have been disrupting production of food reducing the amount of food available for humanity. Even so, not a single human being would go hungry, if only people everywhere had due access to the food available in the world. And, as always, it is the distribution system that creates numerous barriers to accessibility of food to the hungry. 

There is also the issue of food wastage. A UN Environment Programme (UNEP)'s Food Waste Index Report 2024, for example, referring to latest data from 2022 reveals that in that year 1.05 billion tonnes of food went to waste. And 19 per cent of the food available to consumers was lost at the levels of retailers, eateries and households. And even in a low-income country like Bangladesh, a person, on average, wasted 82 kg of food in that year. And, globally, 60 per cent of that food wastage took place at the households. Bangladesh was no exception. Hunger fighters need also to take this wasted food into account.

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