Right now, 44 million people in 38 countries are on the brink of famine. One new child every minute is becoming a victim of Severe Acute Malnutrition – that's when your muscles start to shrink and waste away. You lose your appetite, your vision starts to blur, your hair becomes brittle and thin. Finally, without nourishment, your vital organs swell and eventually fail. Read more about S.A.M here.
How is it in 2022 that this is still happening to children under 5 all over the world? Over the last few years, the perfect storm of rising conflict, including the impact of the war in Ukraine, the increased food prices that we’re all seeing and extreme weather as a result of climate change have aligned to mean that malnutrition, caused by extreme hunger is one of the biggest killers of young children around the world today.
And yet it’s entirely preventable – it just takes political decisions to act.
A political cost to inaction
But with so much on political agendas – from Covid, to domestic issues in the West to a new geopolitical landscape post-Ukraine, there has been little meaningful action on this huge man-made crisis of our time.
That’s why Save the Children has joined forces with civil society organisations all over the world to raise the political cost of this inaction. We know what Governments need to do – tackle the root causes. Although funding is urgently needed in the most acute hotspots of this crisis right now, funding alone will not make this last famine the world sees. We need to fix the food system so it works for people and the planet, global leaders need to pursue peace and invest in a safe climate and healthy natural world.
The world has the solutions it needs at its fingertips, but a lack of political will means progress is too slow for the millions of children whose lives are at risk.
G7 action
During the G7 leaders’ summit at the end of June, our #HungryForAction coalition put adverts across newspapers in UK, Italy, Japan, Germany and Canada – directly aimed at political decision makers. Behind the scenes we made sure policy solutions were sent to leaders too. It was just one step in helping to push this up the agenda. And there were commitments to act which was a welcome first step, but we can’t stop there.
What’s next?
At this point, I firmly believe in the power of people to advocate, campaign and stand alongside those who are experiencing the worst of humanity. Huge progress had been made in recent decades to reduce global hunger and we’ll get back there. We need to keep momentum going across the next political moments but also build the power of people from every community around the world to force leaders to making the right choices for all.
