Food aid from the World Food Programme arrives at at the Oure Cassoni refugee camp in Chad, on Feb. 24. The Mideast war has begun to hurt the poorest people in some of the world’s most fragile countries.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
From famine zones to refugee camps, from Sudan to Afghanistan, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people are enduring some of the harshest effects of the Middle East war.
Fuel and food prices in remote African markets are soaring. Humanitarian supply chains have been choked. Farmers are facing a cost squeeze as fertilizer becomes more expensive. Life-saving medicine is blocked in Mideast ports, while shipping routes are increasingly disrupted.
Relief agencies are warning that 45 million people worldwide could fall into acute hunger by midyear if the Mideast war continues, adding to the 318 million who are already in that category, pushing the number to an all-time peak.
“We are on the edge of a catastrophic surge in global hunger,” said Cindy McCain, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).
“Rising food and fuel prices will cause starvation and destabilization – hitting the most vulnerable the hardest,” she said in a social media post.
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A new report by U.S.-based humanitarian group Mercy Corps gave examples of how the Mideast war has begun to hurt the poorest people in some of the world’s most fragile countries. In Somalia, fuel prices have jumped by as much as 130 per cent. Rice prices in the Somali town of Baidoa, where more than 600,000 displaced people are sheltering, have spiked by 33 per cent.
In Sudan, fuel prices are up by 30 per cent, threatening this year’s harvest. Both Somalia and Sudan already suffer from famine or severe drought, aggravated by slashed food budgets as a result of severe aid cuts by donor countries.
“When fuel and fertilizer markets are disrupted, the ripple effects move quickly through food systems – and the people who feel it first are families in fragile countries who were already struggling to put food on the table,” said Mercy Corps chief executive officer Tjada D’Oyen McKenna.
“What makes this moment even more dangerous is that these shocks are arriving just as humanitarian funding is shrinking, and the system that once helped buffer these crises is far weaker today,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.
Another relief agency, Save the Children, reported that the Mideast conflict has blocked the shipment of essential medical supplies – including antibiotics and antimalarials – for at least 410,000 children in Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.
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Similar disruptions have also hit the World Health Organization. Its supply hub in Dubai is being squeezed by air-space closings and shipping-line congestion, which could lead to delayed deliveries from the hub, according to a WHO briefing this week.
“The blockage in the Strait of Hormuz combined with spiking costs for insurance and fuel are directly impacting patients in our health facilities, in the worst time possible,” said a statement by Willem Zuidema, the global supply chain director at Save the Children.
The WFP, the world’s biggest supplier of food to refugee camps, famine zones and other vulnerable places, says its shipping costs have escalated by 15 to 20 per cent. The Mideast conflict is causing higher fuel costs and war-risk insurance premiums, as well as diversions in shipping routes away from the Strait of Hormuz, it says.
The WFP’s biggest operation today is in war-ravaged Sudan. But the normal supply route to Sudan, beginning with food purchases in India, has been blocked. Ships are obliged to head far to the south, around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, which adds about 9,000 kilometres to the journey from Asian markets to Port Sudan.
“This means it takes twice as long to move life-saving food to Sudan, our biggest operation,” said Henrik Hansen, the WFP chief of shipping. “Every delayed vessel means that people wait longer for assistance, increasing the risk of food insecurity and malnutrition.”
Higher costs mean that the WFP must cut back on food purchases at a time when the rising fertilizer costs are hitting African farmers at the start of the planting season. All of this is contributing to the projected 45 million increase in those facing hunger. “It’s a terrible, terrible prospect,” WFP deputy executive director Carl Skau said this week.
“We are really feeling the pain on this,” he told a briefing in Geneva. “Our supply chains may really be on the brink of the most severe disruption since COVID and the Ukraine war back in 2022.”
German foreign minister Johann Wadephul told a press conference on Wednesday that the disruption in fertilizer supplies could trigger a food crisis across “large parts” of Africa.
Beyond the crunch in humanitarian supplies, ordinary consumers in many African countries are also facing a spike in fuel costs. Most are heavily reliant on imported fuel from the Middle East.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has asked the country’s distributors and consumers to use fuel sparingly, so that essential services can be prioritized. Egypt’s government is ordering an earlier closing time for shops and restaurants to reduce the country’s energy use. Many other countries are anticipating big hikes in gas-station prices within weeks.