By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 9 (IPS) - The Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) has identified seven countries threatened by severe food shortages this year: Sudan, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Angola, Afghanistan, North Korea and Colombia.
The Balkans has also been singled out as a potential disaster area because the population in Serbia is grappling with spiralling food prices and economic hardships.
"The combination of conflict and natural disaster will continue to take its toll in 2001," WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini warned Tuesday.
Bertini said that hunger is a global problem that needs global responses. "Both more money and greater political resolve must be committed before these crises grow worse," she warned.
According to WFP, about 830 million people out of a total global population of 6 billion, are affected by hunger. Of this, 791 million live in developing countries. They are mostly under-nourished people suffering from nutritional deficiencies.
On Monday, the WFP released a 'World Hunger Map' which identifies the world's "hunger hot spots." The UN agency said that millions went hungry not just because of conflict or natural disaster but also because of poverty. "The WFP produced the map in an effort to draw attention to the severity of the world hunger situation," Bertini said.
Of the four Africa nations, Sudan is threatened by a major crisis as millions of Sudanese face food and water shortages due to the recent failure of rains and the country's ongoing civil war. WFP estimates that some 3.2 million people have no food reserves and suffer from a severe shortage of clean drinking water.
The agency has also expressed serious concern over the continued armed incursions and rebel attacks along Guinea's borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone which "could explode into a full-fledged war in the coming months." Guinea is also host to Africa's second-largest refugee population, including 130,000 Liberians and nearly 330,000 Sierra Leoneans.
In Sierra Leone, the continued civil war and immense "pockets of hunger" have thwarted an extremely fragile population. Adding further stress to a volatile situation, says WFP, an increasing number of Sierra Leonean refugees are returning to their home country, due to fighting in neighbouring Guinea.
In Angola, an already precarious food situation could deteriorate further if growing insecurity disrupts the upcoming critical planting period. Due to a shortage of funds, WFP has been forced to reduce the number of people it feeds in Angola by 30 percent: from 1.5 million to one million.
Of the two Asian "hunger hot spots," Afghanistan continues to suffer from the country's worst drought in decades. WFP said that nearly 4 million people in Afghanistan are on the brink of starvation.
North Korea, on the other hand, is expected to face its seventh consecutive year of food shortages because of a severe drought, typhoons, poor infrastructure and economic problems. WFP, which is running its biggest aid operation in North Korea, is currently providing food for about one-third of the country's 23 million people.
In Colombia, the only Latin American country threatened by food shortages, food aid is urgently needed to feed hundreds and thousands of Colombians made homeless by the brutal civil war in the country. The only other countries with high under-nourishment are Bolivia, Honduras and Haiti.
In the Balkans, WFP has launched a 90 million dollar emergency operation to feed some 980,000 people this year. With tensions running high in the Balkans, any new conflict could make the food situation worse.
WFP also said that many countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are also experiencing economic hardships and rising levels of under-nutrition during the last decade.
Last September, the US Agriculture Department released a report which said that in 1999 about 31 million people in the United States "grappled with hunger, or at least the fear of it."
The study said that children and black families continue to make up a disproportionate number of those without enough food.
"Though the report shows that hunger and food insecurity have declined since 1995, the fact is it remains unacceptably high despite the most prosperous economy in history," US Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said.
Meanwhile, Action Against Hunger, a New York-based humanitarian organisation, says that widespread hunger continues to exist at the turn of century despite the efforts of scores of international relief organisations.
In a book titled 'The Geopolitics of Hunger 2000-2001' released last month, Action Against Hunger points out the increasing use of hunger as a weapon in crises around the world - in countries such as Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"He who controls the food supply wields the power," says an introduction to the book. "Hunger remains a weapon throughout the world, and certain populations are the victims of deliberate discriminatory practices that are intended to bring about their subjugation, their departure, or the arrival of the international community."
"In this sense, great famines are always the consequences of human action, even when the point of departure is a natural catastrophe.":
