Q&A With Dr. Arif Husain
Dr. Arif Husain serves as chief economist at United Nations World Food Programme. Mark Powers, Convoy of Hope’s Ambassador for the Poor, interviewed Dr. Husain for Hope Quarterly.
HQ: What led you to dedicate your life to promoting food security around the world?
ARIF: While visiting Southern Africa when working for the World Bank, I learned of a position with the World Food Programme in their Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping division. Three months later, I was hired and assigned to Sudan, where the Darfur crisis was unfolding. It was 2003, and that was my introduction to humanitarian work. It changed my life. To go and assess a food crisis and then come home and talk about solutions — that became my focus. In Sudan, we saved thousands of lives.
I have now traveled to more than 100 countries, often assessing when a disaster or shock happens: how many people are affected, what type of assistance they require, and for how long. I find it extremely rewarding to raise awareness and help create a response. I’ve been doing that for nearly 22 years and have never wanted to leave.
HQ: How would you describe the current situation for worldwide food security?
ARIF: Just before COVID, there were 135 million people at a crisis level of hunger in about 55 countries. That number is
about 343 million people today in 74 countries, and 44 million of them are at an emergency level. If you look at chronic hunger, where people regularly experience hunger as a way of life, that number grows to about 757 million. In the past decade, the number of people forced to leave their homes due to conflict and natural disasters has doubled, reaching 123 million globally. Then you look at … children, who some might describe as skin and bones, and you’re talking about 45 million boys and girls. Another 149 million children are stunted from hunger, too short for their age.
I divide the issue into three buckets. The first bucket is conflict. From 1945 until 2012, there were 39 major conflicts. From 2013 to 2023 — in just a decade — an additional 20. Sixty-five percent of the 343 million people facing crisis hunger live in a conflict zone. The second bucket is climate. From 1984 to 2003, there were about 225 climatic shocks each year. From 2004 to 2023, there were more than 339 climatic shocks each year. There were 363 in 2023, and that translated into 20 million displaced people. The third bucket is economics. In 26 countries, the cost of food has doubled in four years. In 54 countries, food costs have increased by half. An additional economic burden is debt, with half of all low-income countries in debt distress or high risk of debt distress. Many countries are paying more to service their debts than spending on their health and education services combined. In most places facing food insecurity, at least two factors, if not all three I’ve outlined, are happening at once. This is driving both the depth and breadth of hunger and poverty.
The solution to the problem is not just about money, but about how money is allocated. One study showed that a global humanitarian response by the world’s richest nations averaged about $100 to each person, including those battling hunger. But those same nations spent an average of more than $7,000 per person to take care of refugees and asylum seekers coming into their countries. That’s a 70:1 ratio. More needs to be spent on helping people where they are so they are not forced to leave their homes out of destitution.
HQ: Do you have some insights on how organisations like Convoy of Hope can be more effective in serving the poor?
ARIF: Convoy already does amazing work. You give people hope. You just need to stay the course. Hunger will not be solved over a month or a year. When you stay the course, you are building something, you are building healthy societies. As you scale up, as you get more faith-based organizations involved, you will be a bigger part of the solution. Stay the course until a community is out of the poverty trap, out of the hunger trap. You cannot leave them until they can sustain themselves.