Sri Lankan children ‘go to bed hungry’ due to economic crisis, UN says The agency also warned that other countries in South Asia could be headed for a similar crisis.
Supplies of food, fuel and other essential goods have become scarce as the island nation plunges into its worst economic recession ever, after running out of foreign currency for imports.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) South Asia Director, George Laria Adjei, told AFP on Friday that families were skipping “regular meals” as it became impossible to procure kitchen essentials. “Children are going to bed hungry, not sure where their next meal will come from,” he told reporters.
Announcing their debt default, Sri Lanka said in April that they had defaulted on 51 billion in foreign debt and are currently negotiating a bailout with the International Monetary Fund.
Fuel prices have also increased in the wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, which has also crippled the economies of Sri Lanka’s neighboring countries.
Laria Adjei said other countries in the region may have to deal with their own nutrition crisis.
He added that severe economic uncertainty and inflation across South Asia further threaten children’s lives. What I saw in Sri Lanka is a warning for other South Asian countries.
UNICEF has issued an appeal for $25 million to meet the urgent needs of at least half of Sri Lanka’s child population. The government this month issued an appeal to urgently tackle the spread of malnutrition among children.
According to government statistics in 2021, out of 570,000 pre-primary students in the country, 127,000 are malnourished.
