• A new Oxfam report has put Ethiopia in the list of the ten most extreme hunger hotspots.
• The organisation estimates that by the end of the year, 12 000 people across the globe could die each day from hunger linked to Covid-19.

Covid-19 is deepening the disaster in the world’s hunger hotspots and pushing an additional 121 million people to the brink of starvation this year, with Ethiopia joining a list of the ten most extreme hunger hotspots, according to a new briefing by campaigning group Oxfam International on Thursday.

By the end of the year, 12 000 people across the globe could die each day from hunger linked to Covid-19, according to ‘The Hunger Virus’ report. Closed borders, curfews and travel restrictions have disrupted food supplies and incomes in already fragile countries, forcing an extra million people closer to famine in Ethiopia and heightening the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where two-thirds already live in hunger.

In Ethiopia, where 8 million people are food insecure, an estimated 356,000 metric tons of cereal crops and 1.3 million hectares of pastureland have been lost to locusts to date, Oxfam said. “Movement restrictions slowed measures to control the swarms and impacted the food supply chain,” it says.

Ethiopia follows Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela and West African Sahel as the world’s worst extreme hunger hotspots where people are facing a crisis, Oxfam reports on Thursday.

Oxfam also cites “emerging epicenters of hunger,” such as Brazil, India, and South Africa, where millions of people “who were barely managing have been tipped over the edge by the pandemic.”

“COVID-19 is the last straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers,” says Oxfam’s interim executive director Chema Vera, in a statement. “Meanwhile, those at the top are continuing to make a profit: eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders since January even as the pandemic was spreading across the globe ― 10 times more than the U.N. says is needed to stop people going hungry.”

The charity has called for more money to fight hunger caused by the pandemic, and pushed for the cancellation of debt owed by poor countries; and taking urgent action to tackle the climate crisis.