No one can be saved if we do nothing

Sunhee Marian Yun
The author is the director of World Food Programme Korea Office.

I joined the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)’s nutrition support in Kenya in August and October. The handouts were based strictly on digital weighing and iris scanning to ensure the food is delivered directly to those in need. The precise and rigorous process awed the Korean delegates who accompanied the aid program.

The recipients of the handouts included a teenager who had to care for his younger siblings after his parents died and a woman who had to feed her six children plus her nieces and nephews after she lost her husband. About 200,000 people relied on the aid from the WFP to survive the famine. One female refugee said she prayed for Korea, which has been helping the people in Kenya.

The sight of a nearby reservoir and a fruit farm immediately overrode the sense of relief and pride from administering the aid package. To Kenyans, artificial shades and small reservoirs, which are common in Korean farmlands, were considered innovative smart farming. I could not shake the thought that many Africans could go less hungry if Korea and other technology-savvy developed countries offer just a little more attention and support.

The interest given to impoverished countries has been waning. Food insecurity worsened around the globe last year. Both the poor and richer sections of the world wrestled with the spike in food prices from supply disruptions resulting from multiple whammies — military conflicts, climate disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic — followed by high inflation and economic slowdowns. The WFP, which received the Noble Peace Prize in 2020, helped 158 million people last year with the largest donations of $14 billion in 60 years of its activities since 1963. Korea is among the top 10 annual donors to the international body.

But this year has been tough due to fiscal tightening by a number of governments after the pandemic subsided. Yet, conflicts and natural disasters deteriorated. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Israel was attacked by the militant group Hamas in October. Floods that swept up homes and villages in Pakistan last year wreaked havoc in Libya this year. Earthquakes battered Afghanistan for the second straight year, toppling the ruins in Turkey, Morocco and Nepal this year. All these regions are starving ones in need of WFP support.

But the UN organization that relies on grants and donations from around the world has been under its biggest funding strains this year. Earlier this year, the WFP estimated that $25.1 billion would be needed to help 171.5 million impoverished people this year. But it expects to receive less than 40 percent of that target by the year’s end. This means that the WFP food aid has reached less than half of the malnourished population so far this year.

The unprecedented financial constraints inevitably led to a cutback in the WFP projects in food, nutrition and cash support. In Afghanistan, the number of recipients was cut back by 10 million. Support for 200,000 in the war-stricken Pakistan came to a stop in June. The WFP also had to scale back the support list and the stock by half for South Sudan, where two-thirds of the people live in starvation. Emergency relief could not reach the most vulnerable 100,000 people in Haiti. The malnourished people across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America were left stranded in starvation over the past 11 months.

The WFP anticipates that every 1-percent cut in funding would push 400,000 people further into hunger. When outside help halves, an additional 23 million are exposed to a food crisis. The WFP director in Afghanistan who visited Korea in October confessed, “Turning away hungry people who were excluded from the WFP list was the hardest and saddest thing of all.”

I hope Korea could lead the way in spreading hope for people suffering from extreme food shortages. The country was able to fight itself out of poverty through WFP and other international support 60 years ago. Korea now acts as an exemplary donor of emergency aid and modernization support across the world. No one can be saved if we do nothing. We must be the first to reach out in the practice of humanity.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.