LONDON •The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will need to raise US$6.8 billion (S$9.2 billion) over the next six months to avert famine amid the Covid-19 crisis, the agency said on Tuesday.

The WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for its efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict, said it had so far raised US$1.6 billion (S$2.17 billion).

"We've got a lot more money to raise to make certain we avert famine," Mr David Beasley, executive director of the WFP, said at a conference organised by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Mr Beasley also noted that seven million people had died from hunger this year as the Covid-19 pandemic, which could double hunger worldwide, claimed a further one million lives.

"If we don't sort out Covid, (the) hunger death rate could be three, four, five times that," said Mr Beasley.

The Rome-based WFP says it helps some 97 million people in about 88 countries each year, and that one in nine people worldwide still does not have enough to eat.

After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise again since 2016, driven by the twin scourges of conflict and climate change.

"If you think about the wealth on Earth today, we shouldn't see one single child (go) hungry or die from starvation," said Mr Beasley.

The WFP has dispatched medical cargoes to over 120 countries during the pandemic, and provided passenger services to ferry humanitarian workers in cases where commercial flights were unavailable.

The agency, the world's largest humanitarian organisation, is funded entirely by donations. It provides school meals to 17.3 million children globally and delivered 4.2 million tonnes of food to regions or countries in need in 2019.

REUTERS