Why 2021 could be even worse than 2020

A storm of conflict, hunger, poverty and the ongoing pandemic, could make it a very hard 12 months for millions worldwide senior UN officials tell Bel Trew

(AFP via Getty Images)

A “catastrophic” combination of Covid-19, climate change and conflict could see record numbers of people go hungry, dip into extreme poverty and be forcibly displaced in 2021 according to senior United Nations officials who warned the outlook for this year was the “darkest and bleakest ever seen”.

The coronavirus pandemic has infected 65 million people worldwide, killed over 1.5 million, and continues to claim 70,000 lives every week, shutting down countries, closing borders, hitting economies and pushing health systems to the brink.

But it has only compounded an already devastating cocktail of crises which altogether could see catastrophic global famine in the coming months, poverty levels rise for the first time in 20 years and life expectancy fall, senior UN officials toldThe Independent.

One of the biggest contributing factors is war, with one senior official saying there is more conflict in the world right now then there has been since the Second World War, highlighting in particular the impact of the fighting in Yemen and Syria on their populations.

That joins a climate crisis with 2020 on track to becoming one of the three warmest years on record, amid months of extreme heat, wildfires, floods as well as a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season affecting millions of people.

The UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told The Independent that conflict resolution and rescuing those in the most extreme positions by funding the aid system was the best way to prevent these crises turning into catastrophes.

This year the UN has appealed for $35 billion to reach 160 million of the world’s most vulnerable people saying the UN and its partners were “overwhelmed”.

“If [donors] observably pull back there will be a large-scale loss of life, potentially in large parts of the world with substantial long-lasting consequences” Lowcock said,  

“The message is act now to prevent the worst, both out of humanity and empathy but also in your own self-interest, because some of the problems that are brewing will spread to other places.”

One of the most immediate concerns for 2021 Is the spectre of famine.

The number of people across the globe “marching towards starvation” has doubled from 135 million at the end of 2019 to 270 million this year, according to the head of the World Food Programme  David Beasley, who warned a famine of “biblical proportions” could unfold in the coming months if nothing is done.

The most vulnerable places are war-torn north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, where the biggest driver of hunger is conflict compounded by the pandemic disturbing supply chains and farming activity.

In Yemen, which is already suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the WFP predicts more than half the country - or 16.2 million people - will be acutely food insecure by the middle of the year, while the numbers of people in famine like conditions will triple.

But these are not “worst case scenario” numbers but rather the status quo, according to Lowcock who toldThe Independent it assumes the aid programmes do not suffer further cuts and that the Yemeni economy does not totally collapse.

“It’s not unrealistic to warn about the danger of a bigger more extreme event than Ethiopia experienced in the mid 1980s,” he added, referencing the famine.  

Yemen has been ripped apart by a ruinous five-year war between the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed government. That has only been complicated by southern separatists, nominally allied to the government against the Houthis, declaring self-rule in Aden earlier this year, triggering violent clashes and complicating efforts to forge a peace deal.

Already the poorest population in the Gulf, Yemen civilians have suffered the most.  

“From September we have started to see a surge in cases of starvation, there are no salaries  so people cannot afford to eat, the tolerance of the population is sinking,” said Ashwaq Muharram, a Yemeni doctor who runs weekly mobile nutrition clinics in one of the hardest hit governorates, Hodeidah.

“Many diseases, like dengue fever, are also spreading unchecked and without the testing capabilities we do not know who has Covid-19. We are extremely worried about this year,” she added.

Making matters worse is the lack of funding,  donor countries have been struggling to look after their own populations.  

According to Arif Husain, the WFP’s chief economist, the WFP’s estimated 2021 worldwide budget of $15 billion is only half funded so far, and there was a 40 percent funding gap for 2020 impacting their ability to respond to many crises, including Yemen.

In April that meant WFP had to half its food aid to the Houthi controlled areas in the north. In October, the UN said that millions of beneficiaries only relieve assistance every other month.

But is not just hunger that will stalk the world’s most vulnerable this year, poverty will too.

For the first time since 1998 extreme poverty is on the rise largely due to Covid-19 with the World Bank predicting that as many as 150 million people - or 9.4 per cent of the global population - will be forced to live on less than  $1.90 a day in 2021.

Lockdowns and shrinking economies have meant that unemployment is surging across the world, with women, who make up the majority of informal workers, being disproportionately hurt by the economic losses. Meanwhile, global remittances, a lifeline for many, contracted sharply in the first half of the year.

The largest increases in extreme poverty are projected in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. This has already played in countries like India.

In March there were extraordinary scenes of thousands of terrified and starving migrant workers fleeing India’s major cities after the authorities took the sudden decision to impose a nationwide lockdown on 1.3 billion people.

The suspension of all public transport meant many died trying to make the hundreds of miles long journey back to their villages on foot amid soaring temperatures.

While India’s overall economic situation improved in the close of 2020, many of those who had to flee home say they are still without work.

“When the lockdown was imposed only very few families paid us for the days we didn’t work in their house. Many didn’t allow us to return to work for several months,” said Kiran, 60 a domestic helper who lives in a shanty in east Delhi with her family who are also daily wage workers.

“We survived on our savings and on free food provided by the local administration. But then we went to our village for several months,” she said.

While daily wage workers were badly impacted, poverty rates could hit refugee communities the hardest. This year the UN’s refugee agency said the world passed the grim milestone of 80 million people forcibly displaced globally, including nearly 30 million refugees.

That is double the number of displaced a decade ago.  But at the peak of the pandemic, 168 countries fully or partially closed their borders effectively temporarily halting the global asylum system.

The UN refugee agency fears that a surge in climate crises will drive more displacement in 2021 alongside wars and violence. Conditions for these communities will only worsen, particularly in pandemic-hit host countries.

For example, the UN has already warned that nearly 90 percent of all Syrian refugees in cash-strapped Lebanon now live below the extreme poverty line.

Syrian refugees in ramshackle tented refugee camps in Arsal, near the border with Syria, told The Independent they were surviving on food handouts to survive and feared that that life-line might dry up this year.

Despite the grim indicators, WFP’s Husain said there was hope if there is a global effort to take care of the climate, to end conflict and to ensure therapies and vaccines for Covid-19 are not just the privilege of wealthier countries.

“If we don’t tackle these problems, we will not be immune to the consequences. That recognition has to happen.  We cannot solve hunger and its related consequences until we deal with the conflict and the climate,” he said.

“If we can come out of this pandemic stronger, for me the silver lining is that we can build back better than how we went into this period. Next time, when this comes around, because believe me it will, we will be better prepared.”