Food insecurity has become an enormous problem. In 2019, WFP estimated that 145 million people were facing acute food insecurity. Now the organization predicates 345 million people are facing insecurity. The combination of climate change shocks, COVID-19, and conflict has pushed several countries, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Yemen, to a very real risk of famine.

Action on food insecurity today is “more important than ever”, Valerie Guarnieri, WFP Assistant Executive Director, said. Among those particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of food insecurity are refugees and internally displaced people.

“When fleeing many refugees sell or are forced to leave behind their assets their journey to safety is often full of dangers. Family and community support systems breakdown. They usually lose their income and often find themselves with no option but to employ harmful strategies as coping mechanisms.”

Coping mechanisms refer to tactics a family or community employs to compensate for a loss in income. In response to COVID-19 lockdowns, UNHCR reported instances of transactional sex, early marriage, child recruitment, and trafficking in person across its operations.

Raouf Mazou, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, said special attention must also be paid to the specific plights of women and girls, he argued. In searching for food, displaced women and girls are at an increased risk of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and child and forced marriages.

In Somalian regions affected by drought, gender-based violence has gone up 200 percent since 2021, Mazaou noted. He pointed to several factors that may lead to violence when a community is facing food insecurity.

“Food insecurity increases the risk of violence, neglect and exploitation and abuse of children. Girls may drop out of school at a higher percentage rate than boys when families are unable to afford school fees for all their children. Household sent children in search of food work on pasture for livestock exposing them to increased risks.”

The food crisis is also affecting the ability of host countries to provide for refugees. Ethiopia, the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, is on the brink of famine. The country is reckoning with the historic drought hitting the Horn of Africa region, which is severely threatening its food networks. The drought has wiped away important nutrition sources that refugees rely on, such as cattle and water wells. Kassaye explained that the lack of natural resources means refugees can only rely on humanitarian assistance. Yet, as a result of funding constraints, in June, the WFP had to reduce its rations for refugees in Ethiopia by 50 percent.

“It is indeed troubling to learn that the level of support by international humanitarian agencies is reported to have decreased due to the funding shortages. In our view, urgent measures are needed if we’re to respond to the people in need of assistance in a timely and effective manner,” Yoseph Kassaye, Deputy Permanent Representative of Ethiopia to the UN, pointed out.

Refugees Most Vulnerable in Ongoing Food Insecurity Crisis – UN | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The number of people facing acute food insecurity worldwide is expected to continue to rise as the food crisis tightens its grip on 19 ‘hunger hotspots’ – driven by rising conflict, weather extremes, and economic instability aggravated by the pandemic and the ripple effects of the crisis in Ukraine, a joint UN report released today has found.

Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen remain at the ‘highest alert’ as hotspots, alone account for almost a million people facing catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5 ‘Catastrophe’) with starvation and death a daily reality and where extreme levels of mortality and malnutrition may unfold without immediate action. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kenya, the Sahel, the Sudan and Syria remain ‘of very high concern’ with deteriorating conditions – as in the June edition of the quarterly report – but the alert is extended to the Central African Republic and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Guatemala, Honduras and Malawi have been added to the list of countries, joining Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Madagascar that remain hunger hotspots.

The ‘Hunger Hotspots – FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity’ report – issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods and prevent famine in countries where acute food insecurity is expected to worsen from October 2022 to January 2023. 

Globally, an all-time high of 970 000 people are expected to face catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) and are starving or projected to starve or at risk of deterioration to catastrophic conditions in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, if no action is taken – ten times more than six years ago when only two countries had populations in Phase 5.

Up to 26 million people are expected to face Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 and above) levels of food insecurity in Somalia, southern and eastern Ethiopia, and northern and eastern Kenya. With humanitarian assistance at risk of being cut due to funding shortfalls, the spectre of large-scale deaths from hunger looms large in Somalia, with famine likely to take hold in the districts of Baidoa and Burhakaba in Bay region come October. Without an adequate humanitarian response, analysts expect that by December, as many as four children or two adults per 10 000 people will die every day. Hundreds of thousands are already facing starvation today with staggering levels of malnutrition expected among children under 5.

“The severe drought in the Horn of Africa has pushed people to the brink of starvation, destroying crops and killing livestock on which their survival depends. Acute food insecurity is rising fast and spreading across the world. People in the poorest countries in particular who have yet to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are suffering from the ripple effects of ongoing conflicts, in terms of prices, food and fertilizer supplies, as well as the climate emergency. Without a massively scaled up humanitarian response that has at its core time-sensitive and life-saving agricultural assistance, the situation will likely worsen in many countries in the coming months,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu.

“This is the third time in 10 years that Somalia has been threatened with a devastating famine. The famine in 2011 was caused by two consecutive failed rainy seasons as well as conflict. Today we’re staring at a perfect storm: a likely fifth consecutive failed rainy season that will see drought lasting well into 2023. But the people at the sharp end of today’s crisis are also facing soaring food prices and severely limited opportunities to earn a living following the pandemic. We urgently need to get help to those in grave danger of starvation in Somalia and the world’s other hunger hotspots,” said David Beasley, WFP’s Executive Director.

Violent conflict remains the primary driver of acute hunger with analysis indicating a continuation of this trend in 2022, with particular concern for Ethiopia, where an intensification of conflict and interethnic violence in several regions is expected to further escalate, driving up humanitarian needs.

Weather extremes such as floods, tropical storms and droughts remain critical drivers in many parts of the globe, and a “new normal” of consecutive and extreme weather events is becoming clear – particularly in the hotspots. Devastating floods have affected 33 million people in Pakistan alone this year and South Sudan faces a fourth consecutive year of extreme flooding. Meanwhile, a third consecutive season of below-average rainfall is projected in Syria. 

For the first time in 20 years, the La Niña climate event has continued through three consecutive years – affecting agriculture and causing crop and livestock losses in many parts of the world, including Afghanistan, West and East Africa and Syria.

On the economic front, the persistently high global prices of food, fuel, and fertilizer – continue to drive high domestic prices and economic instability. Rising inflation rates have forced governments to enact monetary-tightening measures in advanced economies which have also increased the cost of credit of low-income countries. This is constraining the ability of heavily indebted countries – the number of countries increased significantly in recent years – to finance the import of essential items.

Many governments are compelled to introduce austerity measures affecting incomes and purchasing power – particularly among the most vulnerable families. These trends are expected to increase in coming months, the report notes, with poverty and acute food insecurity rising further, as well as risks of civil unrest driven by increasing socio-economic grievances.

Food crisis tightens its grip on 19 ‘Hunger Hotspots’ as famine looms in the Horn of Africa – New Report – World | ReliefWeb

 The dominance of a small number of big companies over the global food chain is increasing.

Only two companies control 40% of the global commercial seed market, compared with 10 companies controlling the same proportion of the market 25 years ago.

Agricultural commodity trading is concentrated, with 10 commodity traders in 2020 dominating a market worth half a trillion dollars. Food prices have risen sharply in recent months, after the disruptions caused by the Ukraine war, and the continuing impacts of the Covid pandemic, sending the profits of key commodity traders and grain producers soaring.

The Chinese state-owned company Cofco is now the world’s second-biggest agricultural commodity trader, behind only Cargill of the US, with sales in 2020 of just over $100bn (£89bn), compared with $134bn for Cargill. The next biggest trader, Archer-Daniels-Midland, had sales of $64bn in 2020.

Syngenta, the seed, pesticides and biotech company, is now majority owned by the Chinese government through Sinochem and ChemChina. The group controlled about a quarter of the global market in agricultural chemicals in 2020, with $15bn in sales, far greater than its nearest rivals Bayer and BASF. Two of the other Top 10 agrochemicals companies are also Chinese, as is the seventh big synthetic fertiliser company, Sinofert.

According to the ETC Group, an eco-justice organisation, “In 2020, the sale of 45% of one of the world’s largest commodity firms, Louis Dreyfus, to a state-owned holding company in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates signals that cash-rich countries are positioning to climate-proof food security via offshore food production with little consideration for sustainability or the notion of regional food self-reliance.”

Jim Thomas, of ETC Group, said the increasing market dominance of a small number of companies was concerning, particularly at a time of high and rising food prices, a gathering climate crisis and biodiversity crisis. “Power over the global food system is being concentrated in a very small number of hands, and we should be concerned about that,” he said. He also warned that agricultural workers were in danger of being thrown off the land as robotic technology began to be used in an increasing number of countries.

“We uncovered a vast digital restructuring of the commercial food system, including AI, robots, drones, blockchains,” he said. “Concerns include manipulating customers, taking decision-making away from farmers, replacing and algorithmically controlling food chain workers, and the climate costs of the data use.”

Small number of huge companies dominate global food chain, study finds | Food & drink industry | The Guardian

 Every two seconds someone under 70 dies of a non-communicable disease (NCDs), the majority of them in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), according to a new report by the World Health Organization.

The WHO study, released today at the UN general assembly in New York, said that LMICs account for 86% of these premature deaths, most of which could be avoided or delayed if people had access to prevention, treatment and care. They are “overlooked and underfunded”, according to the report, entitled Invisible Numbers. “The data paint a clear picture. The problem is that the world isn’t looking at it,” said the report. The world is failing to take heed of the true extent of these diseases, which cause about 41m deaths each year, or 74% of all deaths globally.

At least 17 million people die prematurely before the age of 70 every year due to NCDs, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and respiratory disease.

Cardiovascular diseases (heart disease and stroke) kill more people than any other disease, accounting for one in three deaths a year or nearly 18m deaths. “Two-thirds of the people with hypertension live in LMICs, but almost half of the people with hypertension are not even aware they have it,” researchers said. About one in six deaths occur due to cancer, one in 13 due to chronic respiratory diseases and one in 28 are caused by diabetes.

More than 8m deaths every year are attributed to tobacco use; unhealthy diets account for a similar number.

Nearly 40m deaths could be averted by 2030 if countries adopted the interventions that are known to work, the report said. Only 5% of external aid for health in LMICs goes to prevention and control of NCDs.

“This report confirms what we’ve long suspected – that chronic diseases are now beginning to outstrip infectious diseases as the main driver of mainly preventable ill health and death in lower- and middle-income countries,” said Katie Dain, CEO of the NCD Alliance. “We urgently need a major financial and public health reset by national governments and the global health community before it is too late.” Dain continued, “The imperative for action is clear and urgent,” Dain said. “NCDs will cost more suffering and lives this decade than any other health issue; will drain the global economy and impede human capital; will both fuel and be fuelled by the growing inequalities in our countries and globally; and will undermine any efforts to ensure the world is better prepared for future pandemics after Covid. Inaction and paralysis is not a viable option.”

Non-communicable diseases kill a person under 70 every two seconds, says WHO | Global health | The Guardian

 A United Nations (UN) report presented Tuesday claims that Venezuelan security services under the direction of President Nicolas Maduro have committed crimes against humanity in an effort to quash political opposition in the beleaguered Latin American country.

Compiled by the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the report outlines the extensive use of arbitrary arrest and torture in Venezuela since 2014.

“Real or perceived government opponents and their relatives were subjected to unlawful detention, followed by acts of torture,” read the report, which then went on to list various types of torture, noting that victims were beaten with blunt and sharp objects, given electric shocks, and force-fed feces and vomit, as well as suffering sexual violence at the hands of security services.

The report clearly condemns President Maduro’s hands-on role in the well-organized system designed to crush dissent. It also rebukes Venezuelan authorities for failing to hold abusers accountable.

“The Venezuelan authorities have failed to hold perpetrators to account and provide reparations to victims in a context where judicial reforms announced from 2021 have failed to address the justice system’s lack of independence and impartiality,” the UN mission said.

 The report says Maduro and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Diosdado Cabello regularly give orders to intelligence services to target specific individuals — often opposition, student and protest leaders, journalists and people working for NGOs. These people are often surveilled, investigated and then subjected to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” sometimes for days or weeks on end.

Mission researchers found that the area known as the Arco Minero del Orinoco, established as a gold mining center in southern Venezuela last decade when oil sales plummeted, was rife with abuse.

“The Mission has reviewed publicly available information indicating that members of the Venezuelan military and political elite have benefited and continue to benefit financially from gold mining-related activities in the Arco Minero,” said the report.  The region, which has become heavily militarized, gives those with ties to power in Caracas the opportunity to build immense personal wealth in a region plagued by illegal mining and where indigenous populations are regularly attacked.

UN report: Venezuela committing crimes against humanity to crush opposition | News | DW | 20.09.2022

A huge increase in wealth of the richest 0.00004% of the world’s adult population comes as billions of low- and middle-income people – many of whom saw their savings wiped out during the pandemic – struggle to cope with soaring food and energy prices.

The ranks of the global “ultra high net worth” (UHNW) individuals swelled by 46,000 last year to a record 218,200 as the world’s richest people benefited from “almost an explosion of wealth” during the recovery from the pandemic.

The number of UHNW people – those with assets of more than $50m (£43.7m) – jumped in 2021 as the super-rich benefited from soaring house prices and booming stock markets, according to a report by investment bank Credit Suisse. The number of people in the UHNW bracket has increased by more than 50% over the past two years.

“The strong rise in financial assets resulted in an increase in inequality in 2021,” the report by Credit Suisse, which helps manage the fortunes of many of the world’s richest people, said. “We estimate that global wealth totalled $463.6tn at the end of 2021, a rise of $41.4tn (9.8%),” the report said.

The increase in wealth has not been distributed fairly. The richest 1% of the global population increased their share of all the world’s wealth for a second year running to 46%, up from 44% in 2020.

The number of US dollar millionaires increased by 5.2 million during 2021 to a total of 62.5 million – just under the 67 million population of the UK. Anthony Shorrocks, an economics professor and an author of the report said the number of millionaires was becoming so large that it was becoming “an increasingly irrelevant measure of wealth”.

More than a third of the millionaires live in the US, which is home to 24.5 million millionaires, or 39% of the world’s total. The number of US millionaires increased by 2.5 million – almost half of all new millionaires minted across the world. “This is the largest increase in millionaire numbers recorded for any country in any year this century and reinforces the rapid rise in millionaire numbers seen in the US since 2016,” the report said.

China is in second place, with 10% of the world’s millionaires, ahead of Japan with 5.4%, the UK (4.6%) and France (4.5%).

Switzerland was once again named the richest country in terms of mean average wealth per adult at $700,000, ahead of the US at $579,000. However, the inequalities in those countries are highlighted when the median average wealth per adult is examined. Switzerland falls to sixth place with a median wealth of $168,000 and the US drops to 18th place with $93,000. Australia is top of the median wealth table with $274,000. UK adults have a mean wealth of $309,000 (14th place) and a median wealth of $142,000 (ninth place).

Number of global ultra high net worth individuals hits record high | The super-rich | The Guardian

Losing our Heads

Too many place their trust in queens and kings

Or posturing, self-promoting presidents.

But where’s the difference? When to all intents

And purposes, whether birth or ballot brings

Them to throne or office, each for all the pomp

With or without benefit of election

Become the focus for misdirection,

Hoping none see the trick by those who romp

Away with the profits and disappear,

While the esteemed leader of the nation

Receives the expected adulation

From all whose vision’s presently unclear.

But what meaning for any head of state,

When the spectacle fails to fascinate?

D. A.

 Millions of people in the UK are suffering poor health because they miss out on vital rehabilitation after strokes, heart attacks and cancer, which in turn is also heaping further pressure on the NHS, a damning report warns.

Physiotherapists say some groups of patients are particularly badly affected. Without access to these services, many patients desperately trying to recover from illness became “stuck in a downward spiral”, they said, with some developing other health conditions as a result.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) says millions of people in marginalised communities, including those from ethnic minorities, are not only more likely to live shorter lives, but also spend a greater proportion of their lives struggling with health difficulties.

Vital services that could tackle those inequities are either unavailable or poorly equipped to meet their needs, the report warns, adding that “some communities face particular barriers”. People who face “systemic discrimination and marginalisation” and those who live in poor communities are more likely to miss out on rehab, the report says. The CSP said access to high-quality rehabilitation services must be improved to avoid “further entrenching health inequalities faced by millions”.

Prof Karen Middleton, the chief executive of the CSP, said: “Rehabilitation services have been under-resourced for decades and were not designed coherently in the first place. This has exacerbated poor health outcomes, particularly for people from marginalised groups. It’s not only the individual who suffers. Without adequate access to rehabilitation, health conditions worsen to the point where more and more pressure is eventually piled on struggling local health systems and other public services. We desperately need a modernised recovery and rehabilitation service that adequately supports patients following a health crisis and prevents other conditions developing.”

People are living longer with long-term conditions and after cancer, stroke or heart disease. When people are dealing with a long-term condition, their future health and wellbeing “makes a significant difference”, according to the report. However, the authors warned: “It should be universally available as an unmissable part of treatment. But currently millions miss out.

“Without rehabilitation people can be stuck in a downward spiral where having one long-term condition leads to other health conditions, including further long-term conditions, with loss of mobility and poor mental health and multiple medication regimes. Ensuring everyone who needs rehabilitation can access it can reverse this downward spiral.”

Thousands of physiotherapy staff in England and Wales would vote on industrial action after overwhelmingly rejecting this year’s NHS pay award. The CSP said almost 80% of those voting in England said they were prepared to take industrial action, with 83% in Wales. The CSP council recommended members voted in support of action. A decision has already been taken to ballot in Scotland.

Millions in poor health due to lack of rehab after illness, warns UK report | Health | The Guardian

 Industries such as retail, health care and logistics are reverting to an old tactic and trapping people in miserable jobs by threatening to saddle them with debt if they quit. Workers across the United States in fields ranging from nursing to trucking have been discouraged from leaving jobs because employers charge them for training costs if they quit before an arbitrary deadline.

It is the  Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAPs) clauses in employment contracts. A practice likened by critics to indentured servitude, peonage and modern slavery, a form of debt bondage. Bosses are primarily using TRAPs to obstruct workers from leaving jobs.

TRAPs have been commonly used by employers since the 1990s, but they were almost exclusively reserved then for highly specialized workers such as engineers or airline pilots. As markets became increasingly concentrated and union power was diminished by policymakers into the 21st century, bosses used their growing dominance to impose TRAPs on rank-and-file workers, such as truckers, nurses, mechanics, electricians, salespeople, paramedics, flight attendants, bank workers, repairmen, and social workers. 

Registered nurse Cassie Pennings testified about being stuck with $7,500, “more than six months’ rent,” after leaving one hospital job because she was appalled by staffing ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t want to be complicit in neglecting patients.

“Despite being one of the most profitable health care systems in the nation, my former employer responded to cries for help from the front line with breakfast burritos and free water bottles,” Pennings said.

Pennings also told lawmakers that she doubted the $7,500 price tag placed on the cost of her training. “I didn’t get any kind of license or accreditation or anything, and my actual training was only a few weeks.”

Lawyer, David Seligman, told the Senate Banking Committee that TRAPs are used by managers to leave workers “stuck with low pay, dangerous conditions, abusive treatment, or work that does not allow them to advance professionally.” He continued, “The law does not permit employers or others to provide a work opportunity in exchange for a worker’s promise to indenture themselves to their employer through debt,” Seligman said. “These sorts of work arrangements harken back to nineteenth century peonage used to subjugate former slaves, and they are precisely the kind of exploitation that our anti-trafficking and peonage laws were designed to prohibit.”

The chair of the committee, Sherrod Brown, commented, “Last I checked, indentured servitude was illegal in the United States. But it looks like some enterprising companies are rebranding it, with these new employment contracts.”

“For every TRAP that is the subject of a court opinion, tens of thousands remain unchallenged.”

More US Employers Are Trapping Workers in a New Form of Indentured Servitude (truthout.org)