Addressing Food Insecurity - UN Secretary-General

United Nations - Statement by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at the opening of the meeting entitled: "Partnering to Address Acute Food Insecurity".

The risk of famine continues to threaten millions of people. In 2017, more than 20 million people across North-East Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen faced severe famine or famine-like conditions. The magnitude of need has grown significantly over the last few years, testing the limits of an already overburdened and underfunded international humanitarian system. In 2017, 124 million people across 51 countries faced crisis-levels of acute food insecurity or worse, requiring urgent humanitarian action—an 11% increase compared to 2016. It also is estimated that 155 million children are chronically malnourished with a majority living in fragile and conflict affected states.
The World Bank has partnered with key UN agencies,bilaterals, the ICRC, NGOs, academics, humanitarians and private sector partners to address these difficult challenges by developing the Famine Action Mechanism (FAM)—a Global Public Good which seeks to formalize,strengthen and incentivize the links between famine early warnings, finance and implementation arrangements.
The FAM is the international community’s collective proposal for delivering on its commitment to promotea ‘zero tolerance’ for famine.
Read the Secretary-General's remarks at Launch of the Famine Action Mechanism: