5 Million More Arabs Face Hunger as War Drives Food Prices Up 20%

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia reported on April 3 that five million additional people across the Arab region have been pushed into food insecurity since the Iran war began on March 1. The agency attributed the surge to a 20% average increase in food prices across 14 Arab countries, driven by shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz and rising fuel costs that have made overland transport unaffordable for many distributors.

The five million figure adds to an existing base of 53.9 million food-insecure people across the Arab region, according to ESCWA's 2025 baseline report. The combined total now exceeds the population of Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait combined.

Egypt moved first. The government announced on April 2 that it was stockpiling strategic food commodities, including wheat, cooking oil, and sugar, through emergency purchases from non-Gulf suppliers. Egypt imports approximately 60% of its wheat, much of it from Russia and Ukraine through Black Sea routes that remain open but increasingly expensive to insure.

"We are taking precautionary measures to ensure no Egyptian family faces a shortage of basic goods," Egypt's supply minister said in a televised address. He did not disclose the size of the emergency purchases or their cost.

The price data tells its own story. Cooking oil prices in Amman rose 31% between March 1 and April 1, according to the Jordanian Department of Statistics. Rice in Beirut increased 27%. Bread in Baghdad — where the government subsidizes flour — rose 14%, suggesting that even subsidized systems are buckling under input cost pressure.

Arab media covered the ESCWA warning as a crisis that demands immediate government intervention. Al Arabiya ran the five-million figure as its top story, interviewing families in Cairo's informal settlements who said they had switched from three meals a day to two. A mother of four told the network: "Meat has become something we only see on television."

Al Jazeera's Arabic service focused on the distributional injustice: Gulf monarchies with sovereign wealth funds measured in trillions sit adjacent to populations in Yemen and Sudan where children are dying of malnutrition. The network did not mention that Qatar's own food imports transited the Hormuz Strait until recently.

Western coverage was sparse. The ESCWA report received brief mentions in Reuters and AFP wire dispatches. The New York Times and Washington Post did not cover it on their front pages. CNN International gave it 45 seconds in a broader segment on war-related economic disruption.

The food crisis unfolds against a ticking clock. Arab countries that depend on imported fertilizer — a category that includes most of the region — face a planting window that closes in mid-April. ESCWA's executive secretary, Rola Dashti, said in a press briefing that "if fertilizer shipments do not resume within days, the autumn harvest across the Levant and North Africa will be significantly reduced."

Iran has used fertilizer access as diplomatic leverage. Tehran allowed two Philippine-flagged vessels carrying potash and urea through the Hormuz Strait last week, in what analysts at the Brookings Institution described as "selective humanitarian corridors designed to demonstrate that Iran controls the chokepoint, not the coalition."

Sudan's famine, now approaching its third year amid civil war, has worsened as the Hormuz disruption compounds existing supply route breakdowns. The World Food Programme reported on April 1 that it had been unable to deliver food to 2.1 million people in Darfur for the past six weeks.

Lebanon's food vulnerability is acute. OCHA reported that more than one million people have been displaced within Lebanon, with 15% of the country's territory under displacement orders related to cross-border hostilities. The country was already importing 80% of its food before the war began.

The ESCWA report recommended that Arab governments coordinate emergency food procurement, establish price controls on essential commodities, and create a regional strategic grain reserve. None of these recommendations have been adopted.

The agency's next assessment is scheduled for April 15.