COVID-19

Stay up to date on the impacts of COVID-19 on the right to food.

The Indigenous World 2021

The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (2021) | Throughout 2020, Indigenous Peoples were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including with increased food insecurity. Indigenous Peoples proved their resilience by setting up their own networks and solutions, connecting communities to help transfer information and goods, and implementing traditional methods of protection to keep themselves safe from the virus and the intrusion of outsiders who potentially carried it. Nonetheless, as the pandemic spread, Indigenous Peoples continued to be persecuted, threatened, criminalised and killed in their efforts to defend their rights.

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Global Gender Gap Report 2021

World Economic Forum (2021) | Another generation of women will have to wait for gender parity. As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be felt, closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years. Although this report does not explicitly mention the right to food, it discusses malnutrition in the context of health and security.

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Global Report on Food Crises – 2021

Global Network against Food Crises (2021) | GRFC 2021 highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence.

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SOFI 2021: Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all

Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (2021) | In recent years, several major drivers have put the world off track to ending world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. The challenges have grown with the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures. This report offers some indication of what hunger might look like by 2030 in a scenario further complicated by the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also includes new estimates of the cost and affordability of healthy diets, which provide an important link between the food security and nutrition indicators and the analysis […]

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“America at Hunger’s Edge”

The New York Times Magazine | 2 Sept. 2020 | Photographs by Brenda Ann Kenneally A shadow of hunger looms over the United States. In the pandemic economy, nearly one in eight households doesn’t have enough to eat. The lockdown, with its epic lines at food banks, has revealed what was hidden in plain sight: that the struggle to make food last long enough, and to get food that’s healthful — what experts call ‘food insecurity’ — is a persistent one for millions of Americans.

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COVID-19 & Global Food Security

This e-book compiles a selection of entries from the IFPRI blog series on COVID-19. The pieces provide key insights and analysis on how the global pandemic is affecting global poverty and food security and nutrition, food trade and supply chains, gender, employment, and a variety of policy interventions, as well as reflections on how we can use these lessons to better prepare for future pandemics. These pieces draw on a combination of conceptual arguments, global and country-level simulation models, in-country surveys, case studies, and expert opinions. Together, they present a comprehensive picture of the current and potential impact of COVID-19 […]

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“Economic Sanctions: A crime against humanity”

Hilal Elver | Welt Sichten| 23 June 2020-  The corona virus has been the greatest public health threat in the world for over a century. Even before the pandemic, long-term conflicts, extreme weather events and economic shocks threatened famine in several countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. In addition, the population in many countries such as Zimbabwe or Iran is suffering from economic sanctions from the United States or the European Union. The pandemic makes it clear that such unilateral sanctions violate human rights and should be lifted. Covid-19 not only pushes health and nutrition systems to their limits in […]

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“Amid COVID-19, US should embrace the right to food”

Megan A. Carney | The Hill | 29 May 2020 – Foodbank lines stretching for miles along American roadways. Millions of children left hungry by lags in federal emergency food assistance. Elected officials are blocking proposals to increase spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. These are among the perverse indicators of a society that regards food as a commodity. COVID-19 has dramatically exacerbated food insecurity in the U.S. because millions of people can no longer afford to feed themselves or their families. Malnutrition, as a result of chronic food insecurity, weakens the body’s defense against disease and may heighten the risk of complications or […]

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