(Adnkronos) – A record number of people worldwide – nearly 45 million more – face severe hunger this year, especially in Africa and Asia if the escalating United States-Israel war with Iran lasts beyond June, destabilising the global economy and keeping oil prices above 100 dollars a barrel, the United Nations World Food Programme warned on Tuesday.
“If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest,” said WFP deputy executive director and chief operating officer Carl Skau.
“Without an adequately funded humanitarian response, it could spell catastrophe for millions already on the edge,” Skau added.
The approximately 45 million extra people who could face “acute food in security or worse” as a result of the widening Middle East conflict would come on top of the 318 million peole around the world who already face hunger, WFP stated.
While the 2026 conflict in the Middle East does not involve a ‘breadbasket’ region like Ukraine, whose invasion by Russia which triggered a cost of living crisis in 2022, the potential impact of the US-Israel-Iran war is similar because energy and food markets are closely connected, WFP said.
The virtual standstill in the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint – through which a fifth of the world’s oil is normally shipped – and mounting risks to Red Sea maritime traffic are already driving up energy, fuel and fertilzer costs, worsening hunger far beyond the Middle East region, WFP noted.
Due to their reliance on food and fuel imports, countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are the most vulnerable to the ‘ripple effects’ of the Iran crisis, according to WFP.
With a sustained oil price shock of 100 dollars a barrel, 9.1 million people in Asia won’t know where their next meal is coming from (up 24 percent), 17.7 million people in East and Southern Africa (up 17.7 percent), 10.4 million people in West and Central Africa (up 21 percent), 2.2 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean (up 16 percent), and 5.2 million people in the Middle East and North Africa (up 14 percent), WFP predicts.
WFP mentioned Sudan, which imports around 80 percent of its wheat, and drought-hit Somalia, where the price of some essential commodities has jumped at least 20 percent since the Iran war began.
“Both are countries with high levels of food insecurity that have also experienced famine in recent years,” WFP stated.
If donors don’t boost resources to offset severe funding shortfalls which have hampered WFP’s programmes in all continents, further increases in hunger “could spell catastrophe for some of the world’s most vulnerable countries that are already at risk of famine,” the UN agency warned.
