US announces additional funding to respond to global food insecurity

FILE: Droughts in 2009 and 2011 killed and displaced hundreds of thousands in eastern Africa

USA - At the UN Security Council’s Ministerial on Food Security today in New York, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced nearly $215 million in additional humanitarian assistance to address the global food security crisis, which has been exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine and its corresponding impact on global markets.

Even before the war began, approximately 768 million people were chronically hungry. This new crisis has only made an already dire situation significantly worse, with as many as 40 million people projected to be pushed into poverty and food insecurity through the end of the year.

This additional support, provided through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), will expand emergency food security operations in several countries already facing food insecurity as a result of conflict, drought, and other natural disasters, including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Yemen.

In addition to announcing new humanitarian food assistance funding, the United States will issue a Roadmap for the Global Food Security Call to Action to reflect the outcomes of the ministerial-level meeting, outlining the commitments that countries have made to address these challenges.

With today’s announcement, the United States has provided nearly $2.6 billion in emergency food assistance since Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. This includes nearly $1.7 billion in humanitarian assistance to respond to worsening food insecurity around the world.

It also includes USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture taking the extraordinary step to program the full balance of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust as part of an effort to provide $670 million in food assistance to six countries facing severe food insecurity: Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Yemen.

The United States is continuing to scale up assistance to respond to this crisis by increasing emergency food assistance in countries that have high levels of food insecurity and are vulnerable to price shocks.

"We are also continuing to call on other donors to increase funding to prevent this global food security crisis from getting even worse and use data analysis to project the potential impacts of the crisis on countries with existing humanitarian emergencies," said USAID.