An estimated 5.7 million people (26 per cent of the population) or more are now in need of humanitarian assistance, with at least 4.9 million (22 per cent) being food insecure, a situation report by International Federation of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said.

The report issued on December 28 said the current crisis in Sri Lanka is affecting all sectors of society and has created the conditions for increased vulnerability, poverty and destitution among a significant proportion of the population.

“In 2021, approximately 2.4 million people (11 per cent of the total population) fell below the international poverty line for lower-middle-income countries. Significantly more poor households than non-poor households have lost more than half of their income since the crisis. People are now selling their assets, becoming indebted and cutting down on food, and their children are less likely to attend school,” the report said.

IFRC said that population groups with existing vulnerabilities are most sensitive to the impacts of the crisis. These include children, pregnant and lactating women, people with disabilities (PWD), female-headed households, migrants, refugees and marginalised ethnic and religious groups. Support for PWD, the elderly, and others with special needs has decreased, making these populations even more vulnerable, the report said.

“Further groups have become vulnerable due to ongoing food insecurity. These include informal daily wage earners, minimum wage earners (employed in certain industries – tourism, construction and other services), single female-headed households with dependent children, families with multiple children below five years old, low-income households including the elderly, households with members with chronic illnesses

or disabilities, and disadvantaged farmers who have halted basic agricultural activities. Outbound migration is increasing, impacting the retention of skilled labour from the country and putting children of absent parents at risk of neglect,” IFRC said.

Given below are excerpts of the report: “Inflation rates have risen sharply thereafter, and the government became unable to import essential commodities, including fuel, which further increased shortages, adding to the surge in inflation. In January 2022, 10,000 LKR was equivalent to 50 USD but by September it was only 27 USD. For consumers, typically this means higher prices for imported goods, fresh pressure on energy costs, and higher loan repayments. Encouragingly, there are signs that the inflation rate is slowly dropping (year-on-year inflation for November was 61 per cent, down from 66 per cent in October and a high of 69.8 per cent in September. This is also reflected in the slight decrease in food inflation (85.6 per cent compared with a peak of 94.9 per cent in September).

“The emerging crisis led to country-wide civil unrest. Following mass protests, which started in March 2022, a new government was installed in May, and the country’s president was replaced in July. To help ensure support from the International Monetary Fund, the new government raised taxes to offset the external debt, adding to the economic burden, including that faced by the most vulnerable.

“What had started as a fiscal macro-economic crisis is now creating profound impacts at the micro-level, with an unfolding humanitarian emergency, in which millions of people are experiencing widespread, acute and increasingly chronic shortages of food, fuel, cooking gas and health services including medicines. Unprecedented food inflation has led to a spike in food insecurity, with rising concerns about malnutrition, especially among children under five years of age, pregnant women, and lactating mothers’ services and continued access to treatment of non-communicable diseases.

The latest humanitarian assessments confirm that the poverty rate has accelerated since the start of the current crisis. Food inflation reached a record high in September at 94.9 per cent. In its latest assessment in November, the World Bank ranked Sri Lanka as having the world’s sixth-highest food inflation.”