The UN says it needs US$ 43 billion to feed or protect 194 million people from violence, now under immediate threat of losing their lives. It is urgent “humanitarian aid”. In total, 296 million are at terminal risk, says the UN. Almost 9% of humanity is starving.
Last week, Elon Musk said he had raised $46 billion to buy Twitter.
The war in Ukraine has increased the risk of “social unrest”, “especially worrisome” in “emerging markets” and “developing economies” with little public money to spend and heavily dependent on energy and food imports, now more inflated. So says a little-quoted excerpt from the IMF report that just came out, the “World Economic Outlook”.
“If you think it’s hell on Earth right now, get ready. If we don’t call North Africa, North Africa will go to Europe. If we don’t call the Middle East, the Middle East will go to the Europe”. That’s what David Beasley said in an interview with Politico in March — he is the executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme.
They are not, of course, left-wing opinions, although people under the influence of Bolsonar ideological drugs think the UN is “communist”. Beasley is a US Republican Party politician, former governor of South Carolina. The IMF needs no introduction, as the cliché goes.
The situation is not expected to improve anytime soon, the IMF also predicts. General inflation may decrease a little in 2023, but not food inflation. From the price explosion that began in the final quarter of last year until March of this 2022, food inflation was 66% (according to the FAO index, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization). The cereal famine was over 71%.
It’s not just about hunger.
In the March review of its “Global Humanitarian Outlook 2022”, the UN recorded that 296 million people were in need of “humanitarian assistance and protection”, 1 of every 27 people in the world, in 69 countries. Extreme need affected 1 in 95 people in 2015. Around 1 in 56 people from 2016 to 2019.
Little?
They are talking about helping people on the brink of starvation or violent death in countries ravaged by war, misery and Ebola outbreaks like the Democratic Republic of Congo, by chronic wars like Syria or Yemen, by recurrent wars like Ethiopia. or in South Sudan, for varied and historical ruin, like Haiti or Afghanistan — Venezuela is also in the package.
Of course, there are many more people in dire straits. We are dealing here with cases of people at imminent risk who come to the attention of the UN, thanks to desperate requests for help.
The effect of inflation should also hit the poor world through high interest rates in the rich world and a drop in world growth, which worsens the situation of poor countries already harmed by capital flight in the epidemic, the social disaster of Covid, lower income from trade, tourism and remittances from emigrants, etc.
According to the IMF, “about 60%” of governments in low-income countries are at risk of a debt crisis (“debt distress”, default) or are already in default. These are the 40 poorest countries in the world (24 of them African), among which the median debt has practically doubled since 2013.
Plague, famine, unpayable debt and more, to conclude, but far from over: “The number of people living in conflict zones [guerra] almost doubled between 2007 and 2020,” said David Malpass, president of the World Bank, last week.
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