Hunger levels are surging globally, with crises escalating in Yemen and South Sudan. As we mark World Food Day, DW learns how failing to tackle suffering today will leave a dangerous legacy for tomorrow.

Today marks World Food Day – an annual reminder of the suffering still endured by so many millions around the world. It is also a chance to celebrate the measurable steps taken towards achieving a UN-led goal to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2030.

This year though, that celebration is distinctly muted. Hopes built up over years of progress in the fight against hunger have been dealt a cruel blow.

A damning report released last month revealed that global hunger levels have increased for the first time in over a decade. It found that some 815 million people were suffering from hunger in 2016 — 38 million more than in the previous year.

The World Food Programme has called these figures an “indictment on humanity,” while the United Nations has warned that surging huger levels pose the greatest humanitarian disaster since World War Two. The misery endured today by those in need is beyond comprehension. And yet, hunger and famine can also leave behind a dangerous legacy. A legacy that can be felt years after the worst of the crisis has subsided.

Hunger fanning flames of extremism

In an interview with DW, the World Food Programme’s chief economist has highlighted the potential that hunger has to fan the flames of extremism and conflict in crisis-hit areas. Arif Husain warned it can be key ingredient in a combination of factors that can lead those most vulnerable towards radicalization.

A close-up photo of Arif Husain (UN World Food Programme)
Arif Husain, the World Food Programme’s chief economist
“Together, poverty, hunger and illiteracy are a cocktail which gets exploited by external factors in terms of extremism,” Husain said.

His warning has been echoed by Virginia Comolli a Senior Fellow for Security and Development at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “Poverty, including food shortages, have been known as factors exploited by jihadi groups to attract more recruits,” she told DW.

Comolli, whose recent book explores the rise of Nigeria-based Islamist group Boko Haram, said her research had recorded this phenomenon in the recruitment of some of the group’s most vulnerable members.

“In its early days, Boko Haram’s rhetoric appealed to local northern Nigerians, as well as nationals from other Lake Chad Basin countries who would happily leave their towns affected by desertification, a shrinking Lake Chad and resulting fishing shortages, to listen to Boko Haram’s sermons and benefit from micro loans offered by its leader,” she said.”Later on, group membership became an answer to unemployment for many of its followers.”

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