Rome: Two UN food agencies warned Wednesday that millions more people around the globe could face famine, with funding shortfalls worsening already dire conditions.
The joint report from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme said conflict and violence were driving acute food insecurity in the majority of the countries identified at risk.
The Rome-based agencies listed Haiti, Mali, Palestine, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen as the worst, “where populations face an imminent risk of catastrophic hunger.”
Also classified as a “very high concern” were Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria, with Burkina Faso, Chad, Kenya and the situation of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh also making the list.
“We are on the brink of a completely preventable hunger catastrophe that threatens widespread starvation in multiple countries,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, warning that a failure to act “will only drive further instability, migration, and conflict.”
Funding for humanitarian relief was falling “dangerously short,” the report said, pointing to only $10.5 billion received out of a required $29 billion to help those at risk.
WFP said that due to funding cuts, it had reduced assistance for refugees and displaced people while suspending school feeding programs in some countries.
FAO warned that efforts to protect agricultural livelihoods were threatened “which are essential for stabilising food production and preventing recurring crises.”
Funding was needed for seeds and livestock health service, it said, “before planting seasons begin or new shocks occur.”
UN food agencies warn of 16 hunger hotspots — 4 of the top 6 are Middle East countries
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UN food agencies warn of 16 hunger hotspots — 4 of the top 6 are Middle East countries
- Palestine, Sudan and Yemen are classified as the worst
- Syria classified as a “very high concern”
Italian general challenges Meloni from the right
- A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down”
- Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections
ROME: A retired general who criticizes the EU, wants to send home illegal migrants and says Ukraine should accept a peace deal with Russia is challenging Italy’s hard-right government on its own turf.
Roberto Vannacci, 57, last month defected from the far-right League party, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government, and set up a new party he said is “proud of being right-wing.”
Opinion polls put the new “National Future” at around three percent support, most of it taken from the League, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, but also Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy.
Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections.
But the general offers “the first movement emerging on the right that isn’t aligned with the three main parties,” Lorenzo Castellani, professor of politics at Rome’s Luiss University, said.
A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down.”
In it, he complained about a “dictatorship of minorities,” while saying Italian star volleyball player Paola Egonu, who is black, had features that “do not represent Italian-ness.”
He was suspended from his army job, with Defense Minister Guido Crosetto — a member of Meloni’s party — saying that his “personal ramblings ... discredit the army, the Defense Ministry and the constitution.”
But in the end, he was allowed to retire, and the controversy made him a celebrity on the far right.
Salvini, whose anti-immigration League has been losing ground to Meloni’s in recent years, invited him into his party and Vannacci was elected to the European Parliament in 2024.
But last month the ex-general struck out on his own, taking with him two League MPs and another who was independent but formerly in Meloni’s party.
He is targeting voters disenchanted with Salvini and also Meloni, who has radical far-right roots but in office has taken a more pragmatic approach.
National Future is “a party of the true right, pure, sincere, proud, unashamed of being right-wing,” and “not hesitant, not fearful,” Vannacci told the foreign press association Thursday.
Once a firebrand euroskeptic, Meloni has worked closely with the EU in office, while her flagship promise to cut illegal immigration has been tempered by a major boost in visas for legal migrants.
Vannacci has “a more extremist approach to issues like immigration, like security, where he explicitly talks about remigration,” Castellani said.
The ex-general highlights Italy’s Roman-Christian roots and has called for migrants to be returned to their countries of origin if they arrived illegally or committed a crime.
While Meloni has distanced herself from Italy’s Fascist past, Vannacci was accused of revisionism last year after a social media post defending the democratic credentials of dictator Benito Mussolini.
National sovereignty, meanwhile, is a priority, with Vannacci lambasting the EU as both overreaching member states’ rights and globally ineffective — not least in the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
