With approximately 45 million people across 43 countries on the brink of famine, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and a bipartisan group of colleagues this week urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to immediately release emergency resources.
Specifically, the lawmakers requested utilization of funds from the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, an emergency international food aid program administered by USDA and USAID. The trust was established in 1980 to provide assistance “as a resource of last resort,” according to a Jan. 24 letter the members sent to the leaders of both agencies.
“The scale of hunger the world is currently facing clearly meets that test, making the trust’s release highly appropriate,” they wrote to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and USAID Administrator Samantha Power. The USDA Secretary may authorize the trust’s release at the request of the USAID Administrator.
Among the 15 other senators who joined Sen. Moran in signing the letter were U.S. Sens. Angus King (I-ME) and Bob Casey (D-PA), who pointed out that “the prospect of simultaneous famines looms large and at an unprecedented scale,” due largely to a blend of conflict, weather disasters and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is difficult to overstate the severity of the humanitarian food crisis facing the world at this moment,” wrote Sen. Moran and his colleagues, citing examples in Afghanistan, southern Madagascar, the Tigray region of Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, south Sudan, northeast Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“The world is facing the most destabilizing threat from hunger since World War II,” they wrote, noting that the last release of the fund occurred in 2014. “And yet today’s global hunger landscape is far more threatening.”
The senators urged Vilsack and Power to utilize the trust’s funds, calling it both the “right thing to do and the smart thing to do.”