GENEVA: More than 20 million people — greater than the population of Romania or Florida — risk dying from starvation within six months in four separate famines, UN World Food Programme (WFP) chief economist Arif Husain says.

Wars in Yemen, north-eastern Nigeria and South Sudan have devastated households and driven up prices, while a drought in east Africa has ruined the agricultural economy. “In my not quite 15 years with the World Food Programme, this is the first time that we are literally talking about famine in four different parts of the world at the same time,” he said in an interview.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2017