Farmers collect tomatoes at farmland in Damascus, capital of Syria, June 29, 2020. A staggering 9.3 million Syrians are now going to sleep hungry and more another two million are at risk of a similar fate, international NGOs said in a joint statement Monday. Signed by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, CARE, Mercy Corps, and others, the statement warned that "Syrians who have already endured almost a decade of war and displacement are now facing unprecedented levels of hunger leaving millions of people acutely vulnerable to COVID-19." (Photo by Ammar Safarjalani/Xinhua)

The international community's response to global food insecurity is "dangerously inadequate," the NGO Oxfam said in a new report Tuesday, published just days after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UN's World Food Programme.

"The threat of 'COVID[-19] famines' and widespread extreme hunger is setting off every alarm bell within the international community, but so far sluggish funding is hampering humanitarian agencies' efforts to deliver urgent assistance to people in need," Oxfam wrote.

"The international community's response to global food insecurity has been dangerously inadequate," said the report titled "Later Will Be Too Late."

The NGO complained that funding for 55 million people facing extreme hunger in the seven worst-affected countries - Afghanistan, Somalia, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen - was "abysmally low."

In five of the seven countries, donors had so far given "no money at all" for the coronavirus-related nutrition assistance part of the UN's $10.3 billion humanitarian appeal, the report said. 

"As of today, donors have pledged just 28 percent of the UN Covid[-19] appeal that was launched back in March this year," Oxfam said. 

Every sector - gender-based violence, protection, health, and water sanitation and hygiene - was "chronically under-funded," Oxfam said.

"But some of the worst funded sectors are food security and nutrition," it added.

On Friday, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the World Food Programme for feeding millions of people from Yemen to North Korea, as the novel coronavirus pandemic pushes millions more people into hunger.

Founded in 1961 and funded entirely by donations, the UN body helped 97 million people in 2019, distributing 15 billion rations to people in 88 countries.

AFP