Mass Starvation is a Humanitarian Crisis.
The Situation
Over the past two months, Oxfam has issued severe hunger and famine alerts associated with ongoing humanitarian crises happening in at least 5 different regions across the world.
Oxfam and local partners are working tirelessly to provide urgent, life-saving assistance in the short term and, wherever possible, invest in longer-term programs to help protect communities from future hunger crises.
Access to food is a basic need and a fundamental human right. We urgently need to scale up our response to save more lives. We need your help.
GAZA
For months, every person in the Gaza Strip has been surviving with crisis-level hunger, in the largest proportion of any population in a food security crisis ever recorded by the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification (IPC). 2.3 million people are living in a catastrophic state of survival and are on the brink of famine.
Oxfam partners report that people in Gaza are living in life-threatening conditions, drinking toilet water, eating wild plants and using animal fodder to make bread. Malnutrition and hunger put the population at increased risk of starvation – especially children.
Zambia
Over six million people from farming families in Zambia are facing food shortages and malnutrition due to a severe drought that has caused massive crop failures.
Zambia’s malnutrition rates are already among the highest in the world. As climate change and severe droughts exacerbate food scarcity in Zambia, the Zambian government has declared a national disaster and emergency.
“Urgent support in form of food and clean water is what people need the most now. Many have no food left because they did not harvest enough last year, and this El Nino-induced weather phenomenon has killed the slightest hope they had to feed themselves”. – Ezra Banda, Director at Keepers Zambia Foundation.
North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
More than 133,000 people fleeing fighting in North Kivu live in unimaginable conditions without water, food, sanitation, or assistance, and face a high risk of disease outbreak.
Oxfam’s Country Director in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Justine Gomis Tossou described the situation:
“The needs far outstrip resources. Sites are overcrowded; people are sleeping in the open air or crammed into sheds, hospitals, or schools, making them inoperable. Others have built their own makeshift camps and are without water, food or assistance with a high risk of disease outbreak and food insecurity. Women are highly vulnerable and exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse.”
South Sudan
Over 80% of the population in South Sudan – four out of five people- are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Overlapping crises, including five years of floods and conflicts in some parts of the country, have devastated the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Over 7 million people in South Sudan face extreme hunger – including 79,000 facing catastrophic levels of hunger.
As over half a million people fleeing conflict in Sudan enter South Sudan, transit camps are at four times their capacity – with over 300 people sharing a single water tap, and over 100 people sharing a single latrine.
Oxfam, together with partners, has provided clean water and proper sanitation to over 70,000 people in the transit camps, but urgently needs $7 million to ramp up its operations and reach 400,000 people with lifesaving food, clean water and sanitation.
Tigray, Ethiopia
Families still recovering from the aftermath of a two-year conflict in Tigray are now resorting to increasingly desperate measures to survive. Food shortages are at a critical level, and nearly 400 people – mostly children and elderly – have already died of starvation in the last six months.
3.5 million people in Tigray are in urgent need of food assistance with one million people facing acute hunger. Unless humanitarian efforts are drastically scaled-up, the region could risk plunging into further starvation.
“The hunger is so unbearable that mothers are forcing their children to sleep for longer hours to avoid hunger pains since there is nothing to feed them”. -- Hareyat, a mother of four girls in Kola Tambien.
Tara Robinson is a Social Media and Communications Officer at Oxfam Canada.
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