United Nations agencies warned on Wednesday that dangerous levels of acute hunger affected about 281,600,000 people in 2023, the fifth straight year food insecurity has worsened and creating heightened fears of famine from Gaza to Sudan.

The agencies’ latest global report on food crises found that more than one in five people in 59 countries faced acute food insecurity in 2023, compared with around one in 10 in fewer countries in 2016. The report’s authors said children and women are disproportionately affected; at least 36,000,000 children under age 5 were acutely malnourished across 32 countries.

“It is hunger that threatens to slide into famine and cause widespread death,” said Dominic Bergeon, director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) liaison office in Geneva. Bergeon told UN News that conflict which erupted in Sudan in April has created a hunger crisis affecting more than 20,000,000 people and that fighting has threatened food production in the country’s main wheat-producing state of Al Jazirah.

Bergeon emphasized the need for timely agricultural assistance. “It is absolutely critical that wherever it will be possible to access the people, we provide them with agricultural inputs on time so that they can plan their field. If those people fail to plan their field, it means we have to be prepared for massive food assistance requirement until the next harvest next year,” he said.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned that some people in Gaza have run out of food and that some are now dying of hunger after nearly seven months of intense fighting. “People cannot meet even their most basic food needs. They have exhausted all coping strategies, like eating animal fodder, begging, selling off their belongings to buy food. They are most of the time destitute, and clearly, some of them are are dying of hunger,” said Giancarlo Chiri, director of WFP’s Geneva office.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned continuing attacks on its facilities in Gaza and reported carrying out a mission to northern Gaza to provide medical and water-purification aid. UNRWA launched an appeal for $1,200,000,000 to support its work through the end of the year; the agency said the funding would help respond to the most urgent needs of about 1,700,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The UN warnings link hunger crises to conflict and disasters, and underline both immediate food assistance needs and the requirement for humanitarian access and agricultural support ahead of next year’s harvests.