About 69 million people were suffering from malnutrition in the Arab world in 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported on Thursday.
Between 2019 and 2020, 4.8 million inhabitants of the Arab world suffered from malnutrition, “in all social classes and in countries affected or not by conflict”, noted the FAO in a report.
She adds, however, that the two most affected countries remain Somalia where 59.5% of the inhabitants suffer from hunger while the fragile federal government has faced a jihadist insurgency since 2007 and Yemen, at war for seven years, where the hunger affects 45.4% of the population.
Yemen also holds the sad record for anemia, which in 2020 affected 61.5% of women of childbearing age.
Beyond these severe cases, “about 141 million people did not have access to adequate food, or 10 million more than in 2019,” said the UN agency report.
With this new increase, hunger has increased by 91.1% in the Arab world over the past 20 years, FAO estimated.
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