Canadian aid worker calls for sustained investment in fighting global hunger on World Refugees Day

This year's global report on food crises says nearly 300 million people around the world are at risk of starvation.

Nearly 300 million people around the world are at risk of starvation, according to the recently released Global Report on Food Crises.

Many of those are refugees and internally displaced people.

On World Refugee Day Friday, CTV News Vancouver spoke to Andy Harrington, a Fraser Valley resident and the executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which is a major partner in the federal government’s international development program.

Harrington recently spent time in South Sudan, where years of internal conflict and a civil war raging in neighbouring Sudan have exacerbated hunger at a time when the United States and other nations are cutting back on food aid and other humanitarian spending in foreign countries.

“Many of the children in South Sudan – and certainly refugees that have come across the border from Sudan – are chronically malnourished,” he said. “Some are acutely malnourished, which is worse.”

Harrington recounted being at a malnutrition centre on the day a worker there had to inform the population it served that it would be closing in 24 hours due to aid cutbacks.

“Refugees and displaced people are right at the front of the queue for getting their services cut – and those services are absolutely minimal at the current situation,” he said. “Being in a situation where people are literally trying to thrust babies at us – it was hard to see.”

The 294 million people experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity around the world in 2024 was twice as many as fell into the same category in 2020. This year was the sixth straight that the Global Report on Food Crises recorded an increase in the number of people experiencing this level of hunger.

The report also found that there were more people experiencing famine-like conditions in 2024 than in all of the previous seven years combined. The majority of people in that situation are located in either Sudan or Gaza.

Harrington’s plea for Canadians that they don’t allow their governments to follow the trend of other countries that have been reducing foreign aid.

“We have many, many needs here in Canada,” he acknowledged. “We have a cost of living crisis. We have food issues here, as well. It is absolutely true. But, we’re Canadians and we can do more than one thing at the same time. We have to understand that the values-based world we live in as Canadians is under threat and we have to stand up for that.”

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Spencer Harwood