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With the war in Ukraine continuing to disrupt global food markets and contribute to rising and volatile food prices, international policymakers are calling for coordination and humanitarian aid to prevent the situation from escalating into further food crisis. 

High food prices and supply disruptions triggered by the Ukraine war are hitting Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries like Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen hard, partly due their heavy dependence on wheat imports. But in the region, Lebanon—already in the midst of one of the world’s worst economic collapses since the 1850s—is uniquely vulnerable to food security impacts from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The war in Ukraine has pushed prices of agricultural products to historically high levels, and concerns about global food security occupy headlines and world leaders’ minds, as demonstrated by recent IMF and World Bank meetings. So far, much of the attention has focused on grains, particularly wheat—because of its importance in diets, and the predicament of countries where wheat accounts for a large share of calories consumed, is largely imported, and is dominated by supplies from the Black Sea.

With the Russia-Ukraine conflict disrupting global supply chains, roiling markets and raising food and fuel prices, some governments have responded with restrictions on agricultural exports. While these policies may be domestically appealing, however, they have wider ramifications for global food prices and food security, according to the May AMIS Market Monitor. The report emphasizes that restrictive trade measures like export restrictions will further limit available food stocks, raise food and fuel prices even higher, and push poor populations into more acute food security.

In many places around the world, hunger is worse than ever before.

That’s the message of the 2022 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), released this week. The report paints a grim picture of global food security. Almost 193 million people across 53 countries/territories were acutely food insecure in 2021, up nearly 40 million people from 2020. This number represents a new record and is only expected to worsen throughout 2022.