World Food Day 16 October: A Hungry World Knows No Borders

When crops fail, people move not by choice, but by necessity. As families are displaced by droughts and failed harvests, the pressures do not always stop at national boundaries. In short, hunger has become one of the most powerful forces shaping our century.

From the Sahel, the vast semi-arid belt stretching across Africa from Senegal to Sudan and the Horn of Africa to South Asia’s dry zones and Southeast Asia’s coastal farmlands, climate shocks are undermining food production and disrupting communities across the Global South. ​

In the Sahel, prolonged drought and poor harvests, amoung other factors, are driving migration north through Niger and Mali toward North Africa and, for some, across the Mediterranean.

Across South Asia, recurrent floods and heat stress have displaced millions in India and Bangladesh, while in Southeast Asia, rising seas are forcing coastal farmers and fishers inland.