A startling bit of news emerged last week from the United Nations (UN) which, we suspect, may have been missed by many people, given our intense focus on the Fifa World Cup now on in Qatar.

The UN, in its annual Global Humanitarian Overview, estimated that 339 million people worldwide will need some form of emergency assistance next year — 65 million more people than the estimate a year ago.

The UN aid chief, Mr Martin Griffiths, is reported as telling journalists in Geneva that the number is both “phenomenal” and “depressing”. In fact, to strengthen his point and highlight the scale of the problem, Mr Griffiths said if all the people in need of emergency assistance were in one country, it would be the third-largest nation in the world, after China and India.

Against that background the UN has issued an appeal for a record US$51.5 billion for 2023 — up from the US$41 billion requested for 2022 — to help people who have been pushed into crisis, some of whom are facing starvation due to conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, climate emergencies, and simmering effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

This estimate, the UN said, means that one in 23 people will need help in 2023, compared to one in 95 in 2015. So, the problem is growing as droughts and floods triggered by a deepening climate crisis, as well as war, are wreaking havoc.

The UN is now warning that these overlapping crises have already left the world dealing with the “largest global food crisis in modern history”.

According to the UN, at least 222 million people across 53 countries are expected to face acute food insecurity by the end of this year, with 45 million of them facing the risk of starvation.

Mr Griffiths pointed to five countries — Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, and South Sudan — that have seen portions of their populations face “catastrophic hunger” this year, but have not yet seen country-wide famines declared.

He also reported that forced displacement is surging, with the number of people living as refugees, asylum seekers or displaced inside their own country passing 100 million — more than one per cent of the global population — for the first time this year.

Add to that, he said, the devastation left by the pandemic among the world’s poorest, complicated by outbreaks of monkeypox, Ebola, cholera and other diseases, and you get a picture of dire need across the globe.

Against that background we note the findings of a recent survey conducted by Caricom and the United Nations World Food Programme, published in September, which found that almost 4.1 million people in the region now face food insecurity.

The survey told us that while severe food insecurity in the region remained largely unchanged, when compared to February 2022, there has been a significant increase in households that have fallen into moderate levels of food insecurity.

The deterioration, the researchers said, has been attributed to rising costs for food and other commodities as the ripple effects of the Ukraine conflict and a slow recovery from the pandemic are felt throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Here in Jamaica the Government, we acknowledge, has taken a number of steps to cushion the population from the debilitating effects of increasing food and commodity prices.

We reiterate our hope that those measures will be enhanced as there is now even greater need to generate investment in domestic food production at every level in order to prevent our people from plunging into extreme poverty.