UN Food Agencies Sound the Alarm: Famine Looms in 13 Countries

While much of the world debates politics and profit, entire families in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, Mali, and South Sudan are suffering from famine. This isn’t a distant threat whispered by cautious experts — it’s a brutal reality, unfolding now as conflict, climate disasters, and collapsing economies push millions beyond the edge of survival. The United Nations’ latest warning is stark: if the world doesn’t act immediately, countless lives will be lost — not to a lack of food, but to a lack of action.

A joint report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) paints an alarming picture. Thirteen countries have been marked as hunger hotspots over the next five months, with five at immediate risk of famine. In Gaza, nearly the entire population of 2.1 million is food insecure after months of siege and bombardment. In Sudan, war has displaced millions and cut off vital supply routes, leaving families to survive on wild leaves and contaminated water. In Haiti, gang violence has driven people from their homes, with children scavenging in streets for scraps of rice. South Sudan and Mali, both battered by conflict and floods, face similar horrors.

It is easy to think famine is caused by drought alone, or distant natural disasters — but today’s hunger crisis is largely man-made. War blocks roads that could carry food. Political disputes stall aid at borders. Global grain prices soar while local farmers flee violence. These are preventable tragedies playing out in real time, on screens and in reports that too often go ignored.

The consequences are immediate and brutal. Malnutrition robs children of strength long before it takes their lives. Families sell their last goats, pull children out of school, and flee to refugee camps that are already overwhelmed and underfunded. Aid workers warn that they are running out of supplies, access, and time.

Yet while the threat grows, global funding shrinks. Major donors are turning away, exhausted by crises elsewhere. Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines, but the ripple effects stretch much further. Without urgent money and safe passage for aid, the UN warns, millions could starve in plain sight.

The solutions are known, if not easy. Food must reach the hungry. Peace must open roads. Local farmers need seeds, tools, and safety to grow the next harvest. Humanitarian agencies need funding before they are forced to decide who eats and who does not.

The world has the means to prevent famine — but does it have the will? That question remains unanswered as families in thirteen countries wait for food that may never come. If famine arrives, it won’t be because we didn’t know. It will be because we chose not to see.