Putin’s war fuelling ‘catastrophic’ crisis putting 50 million people ‘one step from famine’

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has “put more people at risk of death” in dozens of developing countries where nearly 50 million people are now just “one step away from famine,” a minister warned on Friday.

Africa minister Vicky Ford told of drought on an “unprecedented” scale in the Horn of Africa, with four consecutive failed rainy seasons, a climatic event which had not been seen in the last 40 years.

Countries are being hit by rising global temperatures, water scarcity, “alarming” rates of malnutrition and mass displacement.

“The Horn of Africa situation is the worst humanitarian disaster currently happening in the world,” she said.

“The three things that are causing that are of course climate change, conflict in certain areas and that has all been exacerbated by Covid.

“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the impact on food, fuel, fertiliser prices, has made what is already a dreadful situation even worse.

“He has put more people at risk of death.”

Mr Putin recently lifted a blockade of Odesa and other Black Sea ports, allowing some container ships full of grain and other foodstuffs to leave.

However, the soaring prices have already increased the cost of providing humanitarian aid across the world.

The appalling series of pressures were leading to a “catastrophic” situation - “heart-wrenching to the extremes of the imagination,” said Ms Ford - with some 700,000 in the Horn in famine conditions.

“In Somalia alone, over 386,000 children are projected to be severely malnourished and at risk of death by the end of the year unless they get urgent assistance,” she explained.

Britain was “prioritising” funding for the Horn, compared to some other regions, committing around £156 million in aid this year.

“Acting early can save lives. Our funding this year will help millions of people,” she added.

“The international community needs to continue to act and to act now to address suffering and to avert large scale loss of life.”

On World Humanitarian Day, Britain announced:

• £14 million more for East Africa, including £6 million for the Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund, a £5 million boost to the UK Somalia programme and £3 million in emergency humanitarian funding to the World Food Programme, Sudan, helping to reach some 120,000 vulnerable people with food assistance.

• £15 million in UK funding to support up to 200,000 of the most vulnerable people impacted by Russia’s invasion, who are either still in Ukraine or neighbouring Poland. This includes children, older people and those with disabilities. Working with the international aid organisation Mercy Corps, grassroots civil society groups will be funded to provide emergency assistance to cover basic needs, including food, water and sanitation, psychological support and childcare services.

• A £7 million package to support Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict to Lebanon, delivered through the World Food Programme. The funding will help to provide more than 150,000 people with food, water and nutrition.

However, the Government’s overseas aid stance has been heavily criticised by church leaders, Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat parliamentarians and charities after it temporarily slashed funding from 0.7 to 0.5 per cent of GDP, a cut estimated to total between £4 billion and £5 billion.

The move means reductions in aid spending by the UK in a series of developing countries.

Across the world, more than 330 million people are now believed to be in need of humanitarian aid, four times as many as in 2015.

“At the extreme and almost unimaginably horrific end of the humanitarian need spectrum, we think that there are nearly 50 million people in almost 50 countries who are just one step away from famine,” said Matthew Wyatt, director for humanitarian, security and migration at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

“Three quarters of those people are in ten countries and one region which are Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and parts of the Sahel region.

“There is a small window to act to avoid the worst.”

He stressed that often many people die before famines are officially declared so “it’s really critical to act early to prevent that”.

Kate Foster, Britain’s ambassador to Somalia, warned that the situation in the country was already “absolutely dire”.

The severity of the drought is worse than in 2010/11, when more than 250,000 people are believed to have died, with probably over half of them children under five.

“We are looking at a situation now that has the potential to be far worse,” she added.

The failed rainy seasons, with “worryingly” a fifth now forecast, meant less harvest, livestock in poorer condition, and people’s resilience declining “year over year over year”.

Around half the Somali population, 7.7 million people, are in need of emergency assistance, she said, with more than a million forced to leave their homes since January to go in search of food and water.

“Those journeys are often long and treacherous,” she added.

“About 80 per cent of those who are moving are women and children which means they are very vulnerable on the journeys.”

One mother had spent 18 days walking 200 kilometres (124 miles), carrying one young child with her eight others following, to get to the nearest point of assistance.

So far in the crisis, the mortality rate has been lower than in 2011 which is believed to be due to more resilience having been built into rural communities including more boreholes, building dams and expanding basic health services.

“But that said, we are now at a tipping point,” Ms Foster warned, with Britain now focusing on delivering life-saving support with cash assistance so mothers could buy food in local markets, expanding emergency nutrition services, digging and restoring more boreholes, and sanitation schemes to prevent the spread of diseases.

“In reality, when children are malnourished, it tends not to be starvation that kills them but things such as diarrhoea that are relatively easily resolvable with good sanitation and access to health services,” she explained.

Ms Foster worked in the region in 2011 for Save the Children, based in Ethiopia and lead part of the Horn of Africa response to that drought.

“Back then I thought I was seeing a once in a generation tragedy unfold,” she recalled.

“But from where I’m sitting now, I think I was wrong and misjudged that.

“I think we are moving into the period of where we may see unimaginable loss of life and suffering in the coming months without a continuing and significant scale-up of activity.

“From here it’s essential that we and other donors continue to act and that’s about taking co-ordinated action, continuing to prioritise those who are most vulnerable and dispersing funding as quickly as possible to those most in need.”