A report issued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) and submitted to the UN Security Council said that those conflicts were also hindering global efforts to eradicate malnutrition.
A new series of 17 country briefs prepared by the two organizations highlight that conflicts have now pushed over 56 million people into either "crisis" or "emergency" levels of food insecurity.
Yemen is at the top of the list of countries where food security is being negatively impacted by ongoing conflict, recording 14 million people in a state of hunger crisis or emergency on the Integrated Food Security Classification Phase (IPC) scale.
This list includes Syria and South Sudan, where 8.7 million people and 4.8 million people, respectively, need urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.
According to FAO and WFP, in countries coming out of extended periods of civil strife such as the Central African Republic and Colombia millions of people are still wrestling with high levels of food insecurity.
FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva and WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin stated that conflict is a leading cause of hunger: each famine in the modern era has been characterized by conflict, emphasizing how hunger feeds violence and drives further instability.
Conflict undermines food security in multiple ways: destroying crops, livestock and agricultural infrastructure, disrupting markets, causing displacement, creating fear and uncertainty over fulfilling future needs, damaging human capital and contributing to the spread of disease among others, they noted.
PL-4/MNA
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