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UN officials: Security Council can and must do more to break link between conflict and hunger worldwide
26.03.2018 17:48 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) —
As of this week, while addressing the UN Security Council, David Beasley, Head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told now hunger is on the rise worldwide mainly because «people won’t stop shooting at each other,» UN Radio reports.
As to the report, Beasly told if the UN Security Council had done to to break the link between conflict and hunger, countless lives could have been saved.
David Beasley, the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) told the 15-member body that resolving conflicts and ensuring peace are indispensable to achieve food security.
That link, he underscored, is both strong and highly destructive.
«If you don’t know where your child’s next meal is coming from, you may be forced to make impossible choices,» he said, noting that for one per cent rise in the rate of hunger, there is a two per cent increase in migration.
Speaking via videoconference from Biel, Switzerland, he called on the Council to help end war and stressed that the price of programmes to tackle the root causes of hunger is far cheaper that the cost of the current conflict cycle.
WFP can save one billion dollars a year if all armed groups respected international humanitarian Law and provided unimpeded access to civilian populations, explained Mr. Beasley.
As to the report, while briefing the Council alongside the WFP chief, Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, explained that almost two-thirds of the world’s hungry live in conflict-torn countries.
«Conflict - often conflated with extreme climatic shock and high prices of staple food - is the main driver of global food insecurity,» he added, speaking via videoconference from Dublin.
«This Council’s main responsibility is peace and international security. In other words, this Council can help prevent famine to ever occur again,» he stressed.
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