Save the Children estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the number of children in need with 60 million of those living in just eight countries.
The organization has warned that there is a high risk of food shortages in several countries and, if the international community fails to act, 117.7 million children will face extreme hunger and chronic malnutrition and will need lifesaving assistance.
Save the Children points out that the situation has deteriorated due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has left many people jobless and therefore with less or no income. In each of the worst affected countries, Yemen, DRC, and Ethiopia, over 10 million of children will need urgent assistance this year while this number is only a little lower in Afghanistan, over 6 million in Sudan, and over 4 million per country in Syria, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
Save the Children believes that the situation is even worse in terms of access to education since over 300 million children worldwide do not have and will not have the possibility of attending school because of lockdowns and closures.
The United Nation’s predictions for 2021 are also alarming, estimating that half of the 235 million people who will be in need of humanitarian assistance and half of this number being are children. Last year this total was much lower at around 170 million.
According to the UN, 144 million children worldwide suffer from chronic malnutrition but the highest number of these are found in Africa where COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on the economy and people’s income and thus access to valuable food. Twenty-four African countries have recorded over a 30% rate of severe malnutrition amongst children and one out of three African children does not receive a proper diet which means their nutrition needs in the first 1000 days of their lives fail to be met which is of vital significance for their future health.
Experts predict that the effects of the pandemic will be long-lasting and the outbreak has reversed years of progress in preventing famine amongst children. Furthermore, the Standing Together for Nutrition Consortium has assessed that by 2022 about 1.2 million more children will be affected by acute hunger compared to 2019. To offer much-needed humanitarian assistance, Save the Children has decided to launch a US$769 million plan to reach 15.7 million people including 9.4 million children in 37 countries.
Unfortunately, it is not only COVID-19 that has significantly worsened the living conditions for children in the poorest countries who also live with ongoing hostilities such as those in Yemen and Ethiopia (Tigray). The Red Cross has warned that the conflict in the latter may lead to the death of tens of thousands of people as a result of starvation. Fighting began four months ago and the Red Cross estimates that about 3.8 million people in Tigray – children amongst them – are in need of urgent food assistance but as the region is mostly cut off from the rest of the country this prevents aid organizations from delivering help. However, if the people living there do not soon receive aid, within a couple of months many will starve to death.
