Hormuz-Red Sea-Black Sea ‘triple chokepoint crisis’ pushes world toward mass famine, UN chiefs warn
NEW YORK CITY: A “triple chokepoint crisis” spanning the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Black Sea is driving up food and fuel costs worldwide and threatening to push tens of millions more people into hunger, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Tuesday.
Sudan, Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon are among the places most exposed to the crisis, they warned.
The UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, and the World Food Programme’s acting executive director, Carl Skau, both told the Council that conflict-driven hunger had reached record levels, as the effects of distant wars now ripple across borders through choked shipping lanes and collapsing trade routes.
Guterres said the Strait of Hormuz alone usually carries around a fifth of global oil supplies and a third of global fertilizer trade, but restrictions there since the conflict between the US and Iran began in late February have driven up commodity prices and slashed availability.
