Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Programme, said “hunger is at the forefront” of global conflicts worldwide, making it a “national security issue” that requires the help of all countries involved.
“We need help from everybody. The world is on fire right now,” McCain said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” adding that “hunger is at the forefront of all of this.”
McCain outlined that with food insecurity, people don’t “behave well, and things — they start to migrate.”
“Wars begin that way,” she said. “Conflict is a part of all of this.”
Among the areas where the World Food Programme is at work is Syria, which has been thrown into a period of uncertainty after the fall of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad last week. McCain said the organization’s deliveries to the area have been “very smooth” so far — with 70,000 people fed this month — while noting that they need more delivery options open, and more funds.
McCain said the World Food Programme has been able to move goods and food items to where they need to go “in a safe and quick manner” in Syria, noting that she’s hoping that things will “stay calm” so they can continue their work at full scale. But she said the organization is seeing “evidence of great hunger” in the country, while noting that without funding, people will “starve to death.”
McCain said the effort could use $17 billion worldwide, saying there are “so many countries that have absolutely no access to any fundings.”
“No one’s paying any attention to it,” she added.
McCain outlined the “complicated situation” in Sudan, with a slow process to access parts of the country, including places where famine has been declared. And in Gaza, she said conditions are “very close” to famine, noting that only two of the World Food Programme’s trucks were able to get through to the area in November.
Amid the access issues, McCain said “we need a ceasefire and we need it now,” adding that as the leader of the largest humanitarian aid agency in the world, she’s calling for a suspension of the hostilities in Gaza and urging her partners in the aid sphere to do the same.
“We can no longer sit by and just allow these people to starve to death,” McCain said. “We need help, and we need to make sure that we put political pressure on those that need to have political pressure put on them.”
Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
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