Last Updated on April 24, 2026 6:56 pm by BIZNAMA NEWS
Zakir Hossain from Dhaka
Two-thirds of people facing food crises globally last year lived in just 10 countries, including Bangladesh, with nearly a third concentrated in Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN-backed annual report said on Thursday.
The Global Report on Food Crises, based on data from the United Nations, the European Union and humanitarian agencies, said conflict remained the main driver of acute food insecurity. It warned that with conflicts and climate extremes “likely to sustain or worsen conditions in many countries”, the outlook for 2026 was “bleak”.
“Acute food insecurity remains highly concentrated (in) 10 countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen,” the report said.
It added that improvements in some countries, including Bangladesh and Syria, were “almost fully offset by notable deteriorations” in Afghanistan, DRC, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.
For the first time in the report’s 10th edition, famine was confirmed in two separate contexts in the same year — in Gaza and parts of Sudan.
Around 266 million people in 47 countries or territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity last year, nearly double the share recorded in 2016, the report said.
The report also warned over a sharp fall in international aid and said the Middle East war risked worsening existing crises by increasing displacement in a region already hosting millions of refugees and by driving up fertiliser costs.
It said the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil supply route, had sent fertiliser prices soaring as they depend on oil-based inputs.
“Now we’re in planting season,” Alvaro Lario, head of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), told AFP. “So for sure this current food shock — both with the energy prices going up and also fertilisers going up — I think it’s going to have a massive impact in terms of production,” Lario said.
He called for greater support to small-scale farmers, including investment in water- and climate-resilient crops. Crises could also be eased by helping farmers produce fertiliser locally and improve soil health so less fertiliser is needed, he added.
IFAD is also working to boost investment by local private sectors. “Creating the instruments and incentives for the local private sector… is a very important way of making that sustainability and that development money go a longer way,” Lario said.