Hunger crisis | Emergency | World Vision Master

A worsening climate crisis. A global pandemic. The ongoing conflict in the developing world. The goal of World Vision has always been to achieve zero hunger across the globe. But this year, everything changed.

COVID-19 drove food prices to their highest in a decade, becoming the most expensive in the developing world.

Droughts have destroyed crops. Floods have destroyed homes. Pastoral and horticultural communities faced unprecedented pressure.

Meanwhile, the continuation of conflict displaced thousands, who fled from bullets but now fear starvation.

It’s disheartening. We know. But we also know how to help.

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How we fight hunger

World Vision is responding with its largest ever global humanitarian response. We are targeting 25 most-at-risk nations with life-saving aid and assistance. These countries are where children are one step away from famine, living with acute malnutrition or facing the threat of civil unrest and anger.

It’s disheartening. We know. But we also know how to help.

Vital nutrition

Meet urgent nutritional needs of refugees and give them survival skills.

South African farmer standing in a field, holding a head of lettuce and smiling

Livelihood protection

We provide agriculture tools and training to improve harvests for farmers and help them keep their livelihoods.

World Vision volunteer delivering emergency hunger relief package to a mother in South Africa

Emergency supplies

World Vision provides urgent food supplies and a helpline for children and families in different emergency contexts.

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How your donations will help

The numbers facing extreme hunger are staggering. If you stood 45 million people shoulder to shoulder the line would stretch some 13,000 km – from London to Paris and back, 13 times, or all the way from New York to Berlin and back. The number of starving would fill 85,000 Airbus A380s – the world’s largest passenger aircraft.

But your donation will make a difference. It will provide food and clean water to hungry families, provide young children with life-saving high-energy nutrients; provide access to emergency health services; and protect vulnerable children from harm. Your money will also help people at risk from food crises recover and become more resilient.

Members of a Bee Keepers Group join together to harvest the first hives that were provided to help diversify their family incomesMembers of a Bee Keepers Group in Eswatini (Swaziland) join together to harvest the first hives that were provided to help diversify their family incomes

Sustainable farming practices

We encourage farmers to diversify their crops to ensure that they aren't too reliant on one source of income that could be affected by adverse weather or a disaster. Children will benefit from their community's bee keeping and business skills training. These increase and diversify the products and resilience of small, vulnerable farming households.

A girl and boy sit on the floor outside, eating packets of nutritious food that helps malnourished children

Nutritious food supplies

Nutritious food helps malnourished children recover. Pedro (left) and Teresa were diagnosed as malnourished at a World Vision health screening. They are eating enriched food called Plumpy Nut to aid their recovery.

Multi-cash voucher distribution: A refugee woman collects her cash voucher from World Vision relief worker.

Cash vouchers

When families can meet their basic needs, fewer kids will be forced to beg, work, or marry young. And they’ll be able to prevent malnutrition. Cash and vouchers give parents dignity in being able to choose the foods their family prefers to eat. When families can avoid going into debt to meet their basic needs, it lessens the long-term financial impacts of lost incomes due to COVID.

A World Vision member in a refugee camp in Lebanon wearing a mask kneels down to talk to a boy wearing pajamas

Child protection

While in hunger, children will not just starve but they will also be forced to make terrible survival choices that will put them in harm’s way and leave lasting consequences. Forced marriage, begging, migration, survival sex are just some of the things children will be forced into to try to stay alive. Child-friendly spaces help create protective environments for children affected by crisis.

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How we work in emergencies

Right now, children are facing hunger around the world. There are now 923,000 people living under catastrophic famine-like conditions – a 550% rise on March 2021, while globally hunger increased 25% in 2020, following decades of decline. The situation is worsening in many hunger hotspots around the globe.

That’s why we need to be there – in the places most affected by natural disasters and poverty.

World Vision volunteer wearing face mask while talking to a boy in a refugee camp in Lebanon

We respond all over the world

During 2020, we helped over 27 million people in emergencies across 48 countries - that’s 74,000 people each day. World Vision has helped more than 6.5 million children in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq and Syria. We've reached 200,000 people within Romania, 50,000 within Ukraine and 20,000 inside Moldova.

World Vision volunteer delivering fresh food vouchers to a mother with small child in Rohingya refugee camp, Bangladesh

We respond quickly

We’re one of the first organisations on the ground when an emergency strikes. Within 72 hours of a disaster, we can deliver lifesaving supplies anywhere in the world – often even sooner.

Three ex-child soldiers hugging a World Vision volunteer in front of a newly built rehabilitation centre in South Sudan

We help rebuild lives

In the wake of a disaster, we stay to help rebuild the lives of children, families, and communities. We also help to build resilience so that if another disaster strikes, they are better able to cope.

Your support makes change happen

All the resources entrusted to us are effectively and efficiently invested in the lives and futures of children. We always strive to keep our overhead costs low, ensuring that the maximum amount is spent on programmes that benefit children, their families and communities.

In 2021, 85% of the funds raised were spent on programmes, 10% on fundraising efforts and 5% was used for administration expenses.

“The food assistance from World Vision is all we have. I look forward to it every month as our only hope for survival.”

Why World Vision?

70 years

Protecting the vulnerable and fighting poverty

Nearly 100 countries

Working across the world, wherever we're needed

200 million children

Given education, water, food and empowerment

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Frequently Asked Questions

More than 41 million people are on the edge of starvation in at least 40 countries around the world. We have not seen a hunger crisis like this in modern times with countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia all affected. In Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Madagascar, in total, at least half a million people are living under famine-like conditions. Elsewhere millions are on the cusp of starvation.
We are seeing a toxic trio of conflict, COVID-19 and the economic impact of COVID-19 together fueling this crisis. Conflicts in places like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan displace thousands, prevent food getting though and stop farming and harvesting; climate change is creating damaging droughts and sudden floods that ruin crops; and COVID-19 has brought lockdowns that have destroyed livelihoods and daily incomes around the world. Tens of millions of people are now eating less nutritious food, less often and often not at all.
Hungry families do desperate things to survive and this has massive implications for children. First of all hungry families exhaust the minimal savings they may have, and then start to sell off whatever they have to pay for what little – and expensive – food may remain. This means selling off any animals that might still be alive, farm implements, or even their land. If they survive the crisis they are then mired in deeper poverty. Families may also sell off their daughters into early marriage. This means one less mouth to feed and a little income to feed the rest of the family. But girls who end up in this situation suffer abuse, exploitation and are pulled out of school permanently. Their lives are ruined. Other children may be forced to beg, to work in dangerous jobs, or even to join insurgent groups that offer food in return for taking up arms.

In the worst situations whole families and villages may be forced to abandon their homes to trek to cities or displacement camps to find food. The collective impact of these desperate attempts to survive can mark children with long-lasting physical and emotional scars.
There is a technical assessment and process for determining a famine and any announcement of a famine is only made with extreme caution. Naturally governments are very sensitive about a famine being declared.

For a famine to be declared, there must be evidence of these three things:
1. At least two people (or four children) a day dying for every 10,000 population
2. At least 30% of the population is acutely malnourished
3. At least 20% of the population face an extreme lack of food
There is a lesson for us in the last major famine of 2011 when 260,000 people died in Somalia – half of those were children under five. We also know that that famine declaration came too late, with tens of thousands of people dying before the declaration was even made. If we do not respond immediately and urgently tens of thousands of people will die and a huge percentage of those will be children. We must act now, act quickly and act at scale to prevent mass starvation.
If we don’t act now with a global emergency food response we could see tens of thousands of children die and many millions left with long-term health impacts. Children will starve to death without urgent food aid. We also know that poor nutrition in the first 1,000 days of a girl or boy’s life leads to poor brain development, permanent impaired mental functioning and lower IQs. Under-fives are also especially at risk from killer illnesses such as malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia due to their weakened immune systems. Half of the 260,000 people who died in the 2011 Somalia famine were children, aged under 5.
The humanitarian community analyses, compares and categorises food and hunger situations around the world so that it can determine where assistance is most needed, when, and for how many people. It does this using rigorous tools and processes and after gathering field evidence to work out current and projected food security situations in individual contexts. Together this is known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system. Contexts that are assessed fall into one of five food security phases. These are technical terms but simply explained, these are:

1. Minimal: Households can meet their essential food and non-food needs

2. Stressed: Households have minimally adequate food consumption but are unable to afford some essential non-food expenditures without engaging in stress-coping strategies.

3. Crisis: Households either have food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition OR are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.

4. Emergency: Households either have large food consumption gaps which are reflected in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality OR are able to mitigate large food consumption gaps but only by employing emergency livelihood strategies and asset liquidation.

5. Famine/Catastrophe: Households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. A Catastrophe is when this definition applies at a household rather than an area level
Strict criteria must be met to declare the “rare and extreme” case of famine, which the IPC describes as the “absolute inaccessibility of food to an entire population or sub-group of a population, potentially causing death in the short term.”

A famine declaration must be approved by the IPC’s Famine Review Committee, made up of leading food security experts. In determining food security phases, the IPC takes into account a wide range of factors, such as weather patterns, economy, access, security, and political stability.

*(To assess this, the weight and height of children aged 6-59 months is measured and compared to a reference population with no nutrition shortages. Children who weigh less than 80% of the median weight of children with the same height in the reference population, and/or a suffering from Oedema, are classified as suffering Global Acute Malnutrition.)

Behind every crisis there is hunger.

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