World Food Programme sounds alarm as food prices rise in MidEast
Currency depreciation and pandemic job losses in neighboring Lebanon and Syria have contributed to major food inflation in both countries.
Middle East countries have experienced some of the highest price increases in food, the UN World Food Programme said Thursday, warning that millions of families already struggling with pandemic job losses are unable to put nutritious food on the table.
"High food prices are hunger's new best friend," the WFP’s chief economist Arif Husain said in a statement. "We already have conflict, climate and COVID-19 working together to push more people into hunger and misery. Now food prices have joined the deadly trio."
The UN food agency estimates that in 2021, a record 270 million people around the world will be acutely food insecure or at high risk of food insecurity — a jump of 40% compared to 2020.
Husain noted that the countries most likely to experience price hikes rely on food imports or are suffering from climatic or conflict shocks to local food production. Countries dealing with currency depreciation, such as Syria, are especially vulnerable to soaring food costs.
