Joly heads to UN to discuss food crisis

Russian invasion could push nations that rely on deliveries of Ukrainian wheat toward starvation The invasion could well drive an additional 40 million more people around the planet into extreme poverty.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly kicked off two days of meetings Wednesday at the United Nations to help mobilize a global response to the food security crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Joly met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Rosemary DiCarlo, the undersecretarygeneral for political and peacebuilding affairs, before taking part in a ministerial “call to action” on the growing problem of food insecurity around the world.

The meeting, convened by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was dominated by the escalating humanitarian crisis triggered by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, which is about to enter its 13th week.

Prior to the start of the war in late February, the number of people around the world facing a crippling food crisis reached more than 161 million people in 2021, up from 108 million in 2016, Blinken said in his introductory remarks.

The World Bank has estimated the invasion could well drive an additional 40 million more people around the planet into extreme poverty, he added.

“Every driver of the crisis that we’ll discuss today has been made worse by President Putin’s war of choice,” Blinken said.

“It’s a crisis that demands a global response.”

Russia has blockaded Ukraine’s ports, stopping exports of wheat and sunflower oil to countries that rely on them in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

“Canada’s approach will be bold: from providing funding at the multilateral level to logistical supply chain support to food inspectors and cargo shipments, we will get involved,” Joly told her fellow delegates.

“We will free Ukrainian grains, and countries will receive their shipments. To the secretary-general, of course, we will support his efforts to find peaceful and lasting solutions to get those grains out.”

Canada will be sending cargo ships to ports in Romania and other European countries neighbouring Ukraine to help it export its wheat — what Joly described in her speech Wednesday as “freedom wheat.”

The UN World Food Program has warned that the conflict has not only driven up the price of grain, making it more expensive to feed the hungry, but could push nations that rely on Ukrainian wheat toward starvation.

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat, with some countries, including Lebanon and Bangladesh, relying on it as a staple food.