Foreign
By Kennedy Nnamani
AMBASSADOR Cindy McCain, Permanent Representative of the U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome, yesterday in a virtual press briefing, lamented that Putin’s war in Ukraine is gradually driving the world into food insecurity and causing millions to starve.
“Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine has triggered a far-reaching humanitarian crisis. We’re looking at millions of desperate Ukrainian refugees fleeing to neighboring countries, skyrocketing food and fertilizer prices around the world and critical grain shortages in some of the poorest of countries,” McCain said.
Quoting the Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, McCain noted that Russia is bombing one of the major bread baskets of the world and thereby plunging majorly Middle East and African countries into grappling with hunger.
“Ukraine itself was a major source of wheat for the World Food Program. WFP is feeding 138 million people in more than 80 countries, including Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Nigeria. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that as many as 13 million more people worldwide will be pushed into food insecurity as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” she added
Jim Barnhart, Assistant to the Administrator in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, also added his voice, noting that the war not only threatens the lives and livelihoods of everyday Ukrainians, but is already having substantial impact on the global food supply
“With Russia and Ukraine as major suppliers of the world’s exports and agriculture inputs such as fertilizer, the effects of Putin’s war will reverberate for years to come,” he said
“Reduced food and supplies and subsequent price increases in these commodities make it harder for farmers in Zambia to access the input they need to plant their crops, and for families in Malawi to buy nutritious food for their children,” he said.
McCain and Barnhart called for quick actions to end the lingering war in Ukraine to abate the looming hunger crisis that would cause “irreversible effects on food production as farmers lack the resources and inputs to plant their spring and summer crops”.
“Russia alone can stop this global catastrophe we’re facing, and also are being felt on the African continent and beyond,” they added.
KN
Tags: Antonio Guterres Cindy McCain Jim Barnhart Kennedy Nnamani Vladimir Putin
