Latin America tripled its severe food insecurity by 2020: hunger hit 10 million people

Latin America tripled its severe food insecurity in 2020 compared to the previous year, affecting 10 million people, a situation that raises warnings about the lack of social safety nets in the region to prevent the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is how the NGO warned on Tuesday Action against hunger, for those who “without solid safety nets in the form of subsidies, the disease is a condemnation of hunger for those who have lived in the informal economy every day, lost their jobs, or find increasingly expensive food in the markets.”

According to the NGO report presented at a virtual conference, Latin America recorded the largest relative increase in food insecurity in the world last year, a scenario that shows that the lack of protection nets is “building direct bridges between Covid-19 and hunger”.

Specifically, the pandemic created 45 million new poor in the region, which accounts for nearly a third of the world’s infections despite less than 10% of the world’s population, and led to ten million people to severe food insecurity, nearly tripling the figure for 2019, according to the United Nations, they were 3.4 million.

CENTRAL AMERICA

The research conducted by the NGO 3,700 families from the rural communities of the Central American Dry Corridor, The area stretching from Nicaragua to Guatemala revealed that at least 3.9 million people struggle to eat according to the minimum standards of quantity and quality, as only one in ten families surveyed reported having adequate food security.

In addition, the study found a increase income for the purchase of food, to 80% of the family budget.

“More than 70% of families are forced to adopt survival strategies, such as selling some of their belongings, applying for loans, and sometimes even taking their children out of school”, detailed Miguel Ángel García, Central America director of Action Against Hunger.

Socio-economic biases stemming from the pandemic are contributing to the crop loss caused by hurricanes Eta and iota those large parts of it Nicaragua Guatemala Y Honduras in November.

With everything, García pointed out the need to improve support programs, that “they are the key element that can prevent millions of people from falling into misery in such circumstances.”

But the coverage of the “emerging social safety nets” in Central America are still “very uneven”, As García pointed out, while 50% of Salvadoran families surveyed had some form of state aid, the rate dropped to 30% in Guatemala and 14% in Honduras.

PERU AND THE COMMON OLLAS

In Peru, Action Against Hunger has established that 80% of those surveyed had lost their job or had their income reduced by an average of 33%.

According to América Arias, director of the NGO in Peru, it is Andean country ‘One of the most socially affected’ by the pandemic because ‘it never got out of the first wave’ of infections and, before the advent of Covid-19, it already had 20% of the population poor or very poor.

Now, three quarters of the population is food insecure, a reality that affects “mostly Venezuelan families” and involves the search for alternatives, such as “reducing the resources allocated to education, health and resorting to ordinary pots”.

These communal kitchens, largely owned by women, reappeared improvised as one a kind of emergency neighborhood expression in the most vulnerable areas of Peru due to lack of food, work and money.

Only according to Arias Metropolitan Lima went from 337 regular pots to more than 1,300.

“The pots depend on donations, which have been reduced” In recent months, the director of Action Against Hunger in Peru complained, who also highlighted the “worrying reduction in dietary iron, which is essential to combat anemia.”

COLOMBIA IN CLOUD

This is evident from the survey among 34,000 households in Colombia 80% of families, mostly Venezuelans, did not meet all their basic needs for food and housing and 20% did not have a stable source of income.

In addition, as explained by Action Against Hunger’s Director in Colombia, John Orlando, more than 58% of those surveyed “stated that they live in crowded conditions: 2.5 people live per room and in 13% of the cases up to five people were identified per bedroom ”.

Orlando claimed it provision of cash humanitarian aid as one of the most effective solutions Faced with this situation, it is a “worthy alternative that offers the opportunity to choose families over their urgent needs.”

“They also allow the most vulnerable people to be formally connected to the local economy” and “humanitarian aid is recycled and strengthens the economies of the communities where these families live,” he stressed.

(With information from EFE)

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