THE United Nations Organization (UN) announced on Monday (14) the creation of a crisis team to try to respond to the impact that the war in Ukraine is having on global food and energy markets, a problem that threatens the lives of millions of people, mainly in developing countries. development.
“This war goes far beyond Ukraine. It is also an attack on the world’s most vulnerable people and countries,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a news conference.
Since the outbreak of the conflict, the United Nations and other organizations have repeatedly warned of the impact the war could have on famine – as Russia and Ukraine are two major grain exporters – and on the economy of many poor countries, as a result of rising prices for oil and other raw materials.
Guterres recalled that, even before the war, developing countries were struggling to recover from the pandemic, with high levels of inflation, interest rate hikes and debt problems accentuated by rising credit prices.
“Now, your granary is being bombed”, lamented the Portuguese, who recalled that Russia and Ukraine also represent more than half of the world’s supply of sunflower oil and thirty percent of wheat. Ukraine alone, he noted, produces more than half of the wheat used by the World Food Program (WFP), the UN agency that supports countries around the world in fighting hunger.
“We have to do everything possible to prevent a hurricane of hunger and a collapse of the global food system,” Guterres stressed.
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