At least 30% of Colombians, mainly residents of large cities, are in a state of food insecurity due to unemployment, armed conflict and the economic consequences of the pandemic, the World Food Program (WFP) of the United Nations said yesterday Thursday.

No less than “30%” of the country’s population suffers from “moderate to severe food insecurity”, in other words some “15.5 million” of Colombia’s 50 million inhabitants do not have consistent access to adequate and nutritious food, due to a lack of basic goods or resources that would allow them to procure them, says a new report by the UN programme.

The phenomenon “affects a greater number of people in urban areas”, notably 1.5 million inhabitants in the capital Bogotá (central), over 640,000 in Medellín (northwest) and 490,000 in Cali (west).

According to the PEP, “half” of the households that have become victims of the armed conflict suffer from food shortages. Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, has lived for more than half a century in a never-ending war between left-wing rebel groups, far-right paramilitaries and drug-trafficking gangs, which Social Democrat President Gustavo Petro, who became the summer of 2022 the first Colombian head of state in history who belongs to the left.

The pandemic, unemployment and “difficulty accessing land” due to war are among the causes of the problem cited by the PEP, as are rising prices of basic food items, “natural disasters linked to climate change”, as well as the shortages of goods linked to “the war in Ukraine”.

The release of this report comes shortly after warnings of a worsening food situation in the Latin American country. More than 300 children under 5 died of starvation in 2022, according to authorities in Bogota, the highest figure in five years, while some 22,000 children in the country suffer from “acute malnutrition”.