Democratic Republic of Congo has Highest Levels of Hunger in World- UN Says

Addis Ababa,  April 8, 2021 (Walta) – For humanitarian agencies trying to keep people alive, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) presents multiple challenges: hunger, displacement, disease, and violence.

Nowhere in the world do more people need food assistance, according to a new study by two UN agencies.

More than 27 million people in the DRC — one in three of the population – are affected by what the agencies call “high acute food insecurity.” That’s up from 13 million in 2018.

Seven million people are now struggling to survive “emergency levels” of food insecurity, according to the analysis by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

That means they rely on aid for more than half their food needs.

The WFP says it is already providing life-saving food aid to 8.7 million people in DRC.

“For the first time we were able to analyze the vast majority of the population, which has helped us come closer to the true picture of the staggering scale of food insecurity in the DRC,” says Peter Musoko WFP’s representative in DRC.