(United Nations) In the face of urgency, world leaders on Tuesday called for renewed efforts to tackle growing food insecurity around the world, exacerbated by a confluence of crises, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and lack of fertilizer.
Posted yesterday at 9:38 p.m.
In a joint statement issued after a ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, the United States, the European Union, the African Union, Colombia, Nigeria and Indonesia affirm their “commitment to act with urgency, scale and concert to meet the urgent food needs of hundreds of millions of people around the world”.
In particular, they undertake to increase their financial aid to humanitarian organizations and not to put in place restrictions on the food and fertilizer markets, whose production they want to increase.
This meeting came in the wake of the G7 in June, during which the major powers had promised to devote nearly 5 billion dollars to fight against food insecurity.
Addressing the summit by videoconference, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged the international community and affirmed that “any State which causes famine, which tries to make access to food a privilege […]must be vigorously condemned by the world”.
“There is no peace with hunger and there is no fight against hunger without peace,” summed up Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, while his German counterpart, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, called to “act with a sense of urgency”.
US President Joe Biden, who will speak at the UN on Wednesday, is expected to announce new US aid there, said his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, one of the hosts of the meeting.
Famine
In his speech to the UN on Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would finance “the evacuation of Ukrainian wheat to Somalia”, a country threatened by famine.
Among the crisis factors are the COVID-19 pandemic which has disrupted distribution channels, climate change and the war in Ukraine, with officials on Tuesday accusing Russia of putting food security at risk.
“The truth is that [le président russe Vladimir] Putin is blackmailing the international community by using the food weapon”, denounced Mr. Sanchez.
Neither Russia nor China participated in the summit.
The United States has made food security a diplomatic priority, not without political ulterior motives, by targeting the responsibility of Russia. On the other hand, many countries in the South are also insisting on this theme in the broader context of the climate crisis and energy prices.
The leaders stressed the “vital” nature of the so-called “Black Sea” agreement, which allows Ukrainian cereals, on which many countries in the Middle East and North Africa depend, to be transported by boat.
This agreement, signed by Russia and Ukraine then validated by the United Nations and Turkey in July, allowed the resumption of the export of Ukrainian cereals through a secure corridor.
“Contrary to the disinformation coming from Moscow, these cereals and other food products go where it is needed, that is to the most vulnerable countries, generally in the South,” assured Mr. Blinken. The agreement also made it possible to “lower prices” and “must be renewed, and urgently”, he said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has contributed to worsening food shortages faced by some of the world’s poorest countries.
According to a US report by the Conflict Observatory, around 15% of Ukraine’s grain storage capacity has been lost since the war began in February, with adverse effects for global food security.
Need fertilizer
“It is clear that the current disruption of food supply chains and the war in Ukraine will impact the next harvest. There are about one or two harvests a year and we are already seeing it”, had previously warned Alvaro Lario, who chairs the International Fund for the Development of Agriculture (IFAD), insisting on the question of fertilizers whose Russia is a major producer.
“It’s going to be devastating next year […] maybe worse than during COVID-19,” he told AFP on Monday.
Last week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned: “If we don’t stabilize the fertilizer market in 2022, there simply won’t be enough food in 2023.”