By : JD News Desk
Jordan Daily – The head of the U.N. food agency warned on Monday of a looming hunger crisis in Gaza and other parts of the Arab world, where conflict, climate change and COVID-19 have worsened food insecurity and malnutrition.
QU Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told a regional conference in Amman that Gaza’s population face a high risk of famine and needed urgent humanitarian aid, as well as long-term support to rebuild its agrifood systems.
He said FAO is part of a joint U.N. appeal for $20 million to provide emergency relief and restore the production of fresh food in Gaza, where Israeli air strikes last year destroyed farms, greenhouses and irrigation systems.
“The situation in Gaza, coupled with protracted crises in Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, is of great concern,” Qu said in a speech to the 37th FAO Regional Ministerial Conference for the Near East and North Africa (NENA).
He said hunger in the Arab states had risen by 75.9% since 2000, reaching 59.8 million people in 2022, or 12.9% of the population. This was well above the global average of 9.2%, he said.
The region also faced multiple challenges such as water scarcity, population growth, urbanization and heavy dependence on food imports, which made it vulnerable to shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rising food prices and the effects of conflicts and wars elsewhere.
Qu called for an urgent transformation of the region’s agrifood systems to make them more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, and said the theme of the conference was “accelerating” this process.
“In the NENA region in particular, we are seeing a worrying trend of a continuous increase in hunger and malnutrition in the past years,” he said.
He said about 60% of the region’s population suffered from hunger and more than half could not afford a healthy diet, leading to soil erosion and depletion of agricultural resources.
“There is no more time to waste in controlling the damage caused – we urgently need to safeguard our agrifood systems for current and future generations,” he said.
He urged the conference participants, who included government officials, academics, private sector and civil society representatives, to adopt a shared vision, strategy and action plan to achieve this goal.
The conference, was opened earlier today by Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh, who expressed his concern over the situation in Gaza and thanked Qu for his visit.
He said Jordan was working hard to transform its food systems across the value chain to boost food security and economic development, and hoped to benefit from FAO’s expertise and support.
The conference is chaired by the Minister of Agriculture, Khalid Al- Haneifat.
