How Middle East conflicts are exacerbating global hunger and jeopardizing a generation

More than 96 percent of women and children in Gaza cannot meet their basic nutritional needs. (AFP)
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Updated 15 January 2025
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How Middle East conflicts are exacerbating global hunger and jeopardizing a generation

  • Children in Sudan and Gaza face malnutrition, resulting in stunted growth, developmental delays, and cognitive challenges
  • During famine, many succumb to cholera or malaria as malnourished bodies have depleted resistance, experts warn

DUBAI: Conflicts in the Middle East have intensified the global hunger crisis, leaving more children vulnerable to malnutrition and developmental issues, potentially jeopardizing the future of an entire generation.

Globally, almost 160 million people are in need of urgent assistance to stave off hunger, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a global partnership that measures food insecurity.

While economic turmoil and climate extremes are among the top drivers of rising hunger worldwide, it is the conflicts in Gaza and Sudan that are the primary causes in the Middle East and North Africa region, according to the Global Report on Food Crises.

These conflicts, which have triggered mass displacements, disrupted supply chains and led to a significant drop in agricultural production, have deepened existing food insecurity for millions of people in an already climate stressed region.

The spillover of Gaza hostilities has exacerbated the climate crisis in the region and put more people in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria at the risk of food insecurity.

In 2024, more than 41 million people were acutely food insecure across the MENA region, according to the latest figures of the World Food Programme.




There are no official figures on hunger-related deaths in Sudan. (AFP)

Almost half of these were in Sudan, where 24.6 million people are facing acute malnutrition, including 638,000 living in famine conditions and 8.1 million teetering on the brink of mass starvation.

The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which broke out on April 15, 2023, has displaced at least 10 million people, making it the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.

The IPC’s declaration of a famine in Sudan marks only the third formal famine determination since the international famine monitoring system was established two decades ago. Previous classifications were made in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017, and South Sudan again in 2020.

Children are bearing the brunt of Sudan’s hunger crisis.

Timmo Gaasbeek, a food security expert who has worked in Sudan, said that it is often infants and young children who are among the first to succumb to malnutrition and starvation during times of famine.

“Young children, and the elderly, are more vulnerable than adults, and will be at higher risk of death due to different diseases like diarrhea or malaria,” Gaasbeek told Arab News.

“In famines, most people die of diseases that their bodies have no resistance to because of hunger, rather than of lack of food itself.”

As of November 2024, an estimated 4.7 million children under the age of five, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women, were suffering from acute malnutrition in Sudan, according to WFP.




Palestinian health authorities and the World Peace Foundation expect the number of children who have succumbed to hunger in Gaza to be far higher than official estimates. (AFP)

Even in areas where famine has not been declared, persistent hunger and malnutrition can also ultimately result in death. “Even a 35 percent deficit in energy intake can be fatal if sustained long enough,” Gaasbeek said.

“Millions of people in Sudan are currently at this level of hunger, or worse.”

Widespread hunger in Sudan has been compounded by a sharp economic decline, high food prices, and weather extremes combined with poor sanitation, which has triggered a deadly cholera outbreak, creating what has been dubbed “the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.”

As of December, the IPC had declared famine in five areas, including Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam in North Darfur. People in five other areas of North Darfur, including the besieged Al-Fasher, could face starvation by May. A further 17 areas are at risk of famine-level malnutrition.

As a result of the fighting, restrictions on aid and other logistical challenges, it took three months for a WFP aid convoy to reach Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur, home to 500,000 people and the first area where famine was declared in August.

“The combination of fighting around North Darfur’s capital Al-Fasher, and impassable roads brought on by the rainy season from June to September, severed incoming transport of food assistance for months,” WFP said in a statement at the time.

Access was only made possible after Sudanese authorities agreed to temporarily open the Adre border crossing from Chad into Darfur until February 2025.

This aid was a drop in the ocean, however, as the destruction of Sudanese farming has set the country back years.




An internally displaced women sits next to a World Food Programme truck during a food distribution in Bentiu. (AFP)

Gaasbeek said that it would take about 800,000 tons of food aid in 2026 and 400,000 tons in 2027 to minimize hunger-related deaths in Sudan, which can only happen if the war ends before the start of the next planting season in June 2025.

“The key to stopping hunger in Sudan is getting more food into the country,” he said.

About two thirds of grain consumed in Sudan is produced locally, and commercial imports provide about a third. However, those two aspects are affected by the war and economic collapse.

“Commercial imports are maxed out at the moment as consumers have limited purchasing power and numerous logistical and financial challenges hindering food distribution,” Gaasbeek said.

“Companies have limited resources to import more. This means that the only thing that can make a difference this year is an increase in food aid imports.”

He estimates that if aid deliveries remain limited, some 6 million people could die from hunger in 2025. “If the conflict continues unabated, or worse escalates further, both food production and imports would stagnate, requiring very high levels of food aid to prevent mass starvation.”

While there are no official figures on hunger-related deaths in Sudan, Gaasbeek estimates that hunger and disease killed about 500,000 people in 2024 — about one percent of the population.

INNUMBERS

• 18.2m Children born into hunger in 2024 — or 35 every minute — according to Save the Children.

• 5 percent Rise in the number of children born into hunger in 2024 compared to a year earlier, according to UN FAO.


“It is not unrealistic, especially that the deaths of children are not very visible,” he said.

On Jan. 6, the UN launched a $4.2 billion call for funding to assist 20.9 million of the 30.4 million people across Sudan who are now in desperate need. More than half of them are children.

In late December, the Sudanese government rejected the IPC’s conclusions that famine was now rife in Sudan, accusing the organization of procedural and transparency failings and of failing to use updated field data.

The IPC had requested access to other areas at risk of famine in South Darfur, Al-Jazirah and Khartoum to gain data on the situation, but the government has been accused of stonewalling such efforts.

Sudan is not the only hunger hotspot in the MENA region.

The war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, has displaced some 90 percent of Gaza’s two million people and has led to high levels of acute food insecurity, with half the population expected to face extreme malnutrition.

On Nov. 9, the Famine Review Committee issued an alert warning of “imminent famine” in the besieged northern Gaza, where the World Health Organization estimates some 75,000 inhabitants remain.




With some 70 percent of Gaza’s crop fields destroyed, and with shops, factories and bakeries damaged or destroyed, domestic food manufacture has all but collapsed, according to the IPC. (AFP)


Many of the displaced are battling frigid winter temperatures in squalid tents, frequently flooded by heavy rain in south and central Gaza, without consistent access to food or medical services.

Early in the conflict, Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, severely limiting the amount of humanitarian aid that was permitted to enter. Tighter restrictions have been imposed on northern Gaza since last October, as Israel intensifies efforts to weed out Hamas fighters.

In December, Israeli authorities allowed only two aid convoys to enter northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, exacerbating the hunger crisis.

With some 70 percent of Gaza’s crop fields destroyed, and with shops, factories and bakeries damaged or destroyed, domestic food manufacture has all but collapsed, according to the IPC.

As in Sudan, the burden of food scarcity has fallen on vulnerable children. In June, the WHO recorded 32 deaths from malnutrition, including 28 children under the age of five.

“Over 8,000 children under five years old have been diagnosed and treated for acute malnutrition, including 1,600 children with severe acute malnutrition,” WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said at the time.

However, Palestinian health authorities and the World Peace Foundation expect the number of children who have succumbed to hunger in Gaza to be far higher than official estimates.




A woman bakes bread in a traditional clay oven at a makeshift displacement camp in Khan Yunis. (AFP)


More than 96 percent of women and children in Gaza cannot meet their basic nutritional needs, as they survive on rationed flour, lentils, pasta and canned goods — a diet that slowly compromises their health, according to the UN children’s fund, UNICEF.

For children, the impact of malnutrition on development can be irreversible.

“It affects their mental capacities and can put them at risk of physical challenges including stunted growth, delayed puberty, weakened immunity and increased risk of chronic diseases, vision and hearing impairments,” Dr. Yazeed Mansour Alkhawaldeh, a former health specialist at Medecins Sans Frontieres, told Arab News.

“Such circumstances can impact children’s cognitive and emotional development as well, resulting in a lower IQ and poor academic performance. They are also more prone to develop anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.”

 


Israeli kibbutz says elderly hostage held in Gaza dead

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Israeli kibbutz says elderly hostage held in Gaza dead

  • The kibbutz called on the Israeli government and world leaders “to continue acting with determination to bring back all the hostages, both the living and the dead, and not to allow painful stories like Shlomo’s to repeat themselves”

JERUSALEM: An elderly Israeli man taken hostage by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, has been declared dead, a statement from his kibbutz said on Tuesday.
“With heavy hearts, we, the members of the kibbutz, received the news this morning about the murder of our dear friend, Shlomo Mansour, 86 years old, who was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Kissufim during the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023,” the community said of the Iraqi-born Israeli.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Tuesday that the “decision to confirm his death was based on intelligence gathered in recent months.”

Shlomo Mantzur, an Israeli hostage who was kidnapped in the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and announced that he was killed on that same day, by Israel authority today, is pictured in this undated handout photo. (REUTERS)

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X that Mansour had been “murdered in captivity” by Hamas on October 7.
One of the founders of Kibbutz Kissufim, Mansour was kidnapped from a henhouse during Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.
His wife Mazal Mansour, with whom he lived for 60 years, managed to escape the attack. The couple have five children and 12 grandchildren.
The Israeli hostage forum said in a statement that Mansour, born in Baghdad, was a survivor of the Farhud pogrom — a 1941 attack on Iraq’s Jewish community — and immigrated to Israel with his family at 13.
“This is one of the most difficult days in the history of our kibbutz,” the community of Kissufim said in a statement.
“Shlomo was much more than a community member to us — he was a father, grandfather, a true friend and the beating heart of Kissufim.”
“Our hearts are broken that we couldn’t bring him back to us alive.”
The kibbutz called on the Israeli government and world leaders “to continue acting with determination to bring back all the hostages, both the living and the dead, and not to allow painful stories like Shlomo’s to repeat themselves.”
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he and his wife, Sara, “share in the family’s deep mourning.”
“We will not rest and will not be silent until he is returned to a burial in Israel. We will continue to act with determination and without pause until we return all of our hostages — both the living and the fallen,” he said.
A fragile ceasefire reached last month between Hamas and Israel appeared strained on Tuesday, a day after Hamas threatened to postpone the release of Israeli hostages scheduled for Saturday.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump warned that “all hell” would break loose if every Israeli hostage is not released from Gaza within the coming days, a threat Hamas said “further complicates matters.”
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, which resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 that Israeli officials say are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the war has killed at least 48,208 people in the territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
 

 


Turkmenistan reaches deal with Turkiye to ship natural gas via Iran

Updated 16 min 32 sec ago
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Turkmenistan reaches deal with Turkiye to ship natural gas via Iran

  • Turkiye imports gas via pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan: Turkmenistan has struck a deal to ship natural gas to Turkiye via Iran, a government daily reported Tuesday.
The official daily Neutral Tyrkmenistan said that Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the chairman of the country’s People’s Council, welcomed the deal in a phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Berdymukhamedov said it was a major development in the regional energy cooperation.
Gas supplies under the contract that was signed between the state-run Turkmengas company and Turkiye’s state-owned BOTAS will begin on March 1.
“With this agreement, which we have been working on for many years, we will strengthen the natural gas supply security of our country and our region, while furthering the strategic cooperation between the two countries,” Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in a statement.
Turkiye imports gas via pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran.
Last year, Turkmenistan signed a contract with Iran for 10 billion cubic meters (353 billion cubic feet) of natural gas to be shipped on to Iraq.
The ex-Soviet Central Asian country relies heavily on the export of its vast natural gas reserves. China is the nation’s main customer for gas and Turkmenistan also is working on a pipeline to supply gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

 


Jordan to take sick Gaza kids as Trump pushes takeover plan

Updated 11 February 2025
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Jordan to take sick Gaza kids as Trump pushes takeover plan

  • Jordan would take in some 2,000 sick children from war-torn Gaza
  • US president called it a 'beautiful gesture' and said he didn’t know about it before the Jordanian monarch’s arrival at the White House

WASHINGTON: Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Tuesday told Donald Trump that his country would take in some 2,000 sick children from war-torn Gaza, as the US president pushed his plan to take over the territory and push out Palestinians.
Speaking at the White House, King Abdullah added that Egypt would present a proposal on how countries in the region could “work” with Trump on the plan, despite Arab nations and the Palestinians having rejected it outright.
“I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children, cancer children who are in a very ill state, that is possible,” King Abdullah said as Trump welcomed him and Crown Prince Hussein in the Oval Office.
Trump called it a “beautiful gesture” and said he didn’t know about it before the Jordanian monarch’s arrival at the White House.
The US president meanwhile backed down on a suggestion that he could withhold aid for Jordan and Egypt if they refused to take in more than two million Palestinians from Gaza.
“I think we’ll do something. I don’t have to threaten that, I do believe we’re above that,” Trump said.
Trump stunned the world when he announced a proposal last week for the United States to “take over” Gaza, envisioning rebuilding the devastated territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East” — but only after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, with no plan for them ever to return.
Jordan’s King Abdullah was repeatedly pressed by reporters on whether he supported the plan, but said only that Egypt was coming up with a response and that Arab nations would then discuss it at talks in Riyadh.
“The president is looking at Egypt coming to present that plan... (then) we will be in Saudi Arabia to discuss how we should work with the president and with the United States,” King Abdullah said.
“The point is, how do we make this work in a way that is good for everybody," he added.


UN experts warn Trump Gaza plan would return world to ‘dark days of colonial conquest’

Updated 11 February 2025
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UN experts warn Trump Gaza plan would return world to ‘dark days of colonial conquest’

  • Call for US to facilitate permanent ceasefire, resume UNRWA funding, and compensate Palestinians for damage caused by US weapons
  • US should pressure Israel to pay for reconstruction and reparations, hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable, and support Palestinian statehood, experts say

NEW YORK: A group of more than 30 independent UN experts on Tuesday denounced threats by US President Donald Trump to “take over” and “own” Gaza, warning that such a move would usher in a new era of “predatory lawlessness.”

Referring to Trump’s suggestion that Gaza’s Palestinian population could be relocated through the use of military force if required, the experts said: “Such blatant violations by a major power would break the global taboo on military aggression and embolden other predatory countries to seize foreign territories, with devastating consequences for peace and human rights globally.”

They added that implementing the US proposal would “shatter the most fundamental rules of the international order and the United Nations Charter since 1945, which the US was instrumental in creating to restore peace after the catastrophic Second World War and Holocaust.

“It would return the world to the dark days of colonial conquest.”

The experts underscored that it was clearly unlawful to invade and seize foreign land by force; to forcibly expel inhabitants; and to deny the Palestinian people their fundamental right to self-determination, which includes keeping Gaza as part of a sovereign Palestinian state.

“Such violations would replace the international rule of law and the stability it brings with the lawless ‘rule of the strongest’.”

The experts include Ben Saul, the special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights while countering terrorism; Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian territories, and George Katrougalos, an independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.

They said that just as more than 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine had failed to bring peace or security to either Israel or Palestine, a US occupation would have the same disastrous outcome, driving endless war, death, and destruction.

The mass deportation of civilians from occupied territories was classified as a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Conventions following the Second World War to prevent the repetition of actions such as Nazi Germany’s forced expulsion of populations from European nations.

“The US proposal would accelerate forced displacement of Palestinians from their lands, which began in the 1947-48 Nakba, and has since included home demolitions, evictions, destruction and theft of natural resources and the criminal building of illegal Israeli colonial settlements,” the experts warned.

During his previous term, Trump unlawfully acknowledged Israel’s illegal annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, actions that have been condemned by the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, and a vast majority of countries.

“If the US president is genuinely concerned for the welfare of Palestinians, the US should broker a lasting ceasefire, resume funding to UNRWA, compensate Palestinians for damage resulting from US weapons and munitions supplied to Israel despite the serious risk of violations of humanitarian law, and end arms transfers. It should also pressure Israel to fund reconstruction and provide reparation for violations, pursue accountability for perpetrators of international crimes, and meaningfully support Palestinian statehood,” they said.

The experts said that if the US president truly cares about the well-being of Palestinians, the US should facilitate a lasting ceasefire, resume funding to UNRWA, compensate Palestinians for the damage caused by US weapons and munitions provided to Israel despite the significant risk of humanitarian law violations, and halt arms transfers.

They added that the US should also urge Israel to finance reconstruction, offer reparations for violations, seek accountability for those responsible for international crimes, and genuinely support Palestinian statehood.

Israeli military action in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of over 48,100 Palestinians and left 110,000 injured, mostly women and children. The attacks have rendered 85 percent of the population, roughly 1.9 million people, homeless, and without access to sufficient food, water, and other basic needs. They have also severely damaged or destroyed most homes, agricultural land, public infrastructure, and caused extensive environmental harm.


Kuwait sends 22nd relief plane to Syria

Updated 11 February 2025
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Kuwait sends 22nd relief plane to Syria

  • Kuwaiti air bridge to deliver aid to Damascus beyond the month of Ramadan
  • 10 tons of food aid brings total relief supply to 591 tons

LONDON: The 22nd Kuwaiti relief plane arrived at Damascus International Airport, delivering essential aid to Syria as part of Kuwaiti efforts to alleviate the Syrian crisis.

An air force plane delivered 10 tons of food aid, which was organized by the Kuwait Red Crescent Society in cooperation with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, the Kuwait News Agency reported late on Monday.

The Kuwait Red Crescent is working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to deliver food and shelter materials as part of an air bridge planned to operate between Kuwait and Syria beyond the month of Ramadan, which starts in March.

Kuwaiti aid provided to Syria through the air bridge has reached 591 tons of various relief supplies, the KUNA added.