The world is facing its greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945according to United Nations Official.

The U.N. Security Council was briefed that that more than 20 million people across four countries in Africa and the Middle East are at risk of starvation and famine. It has been hailed the crisis the largest in the history of the U.N., which was founded in 1945, and it is estimated that $4.4 billion shall be required by July to combat extreme hunger in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and northeast Nigeria.

In Yemen alone, he said the number of people who don’t know where their next meal will come from, has increased by 3 million since January.

NPR has reported extensively on the famine problem in the region, most recently last week, when Somalia’s prime minister said 110 people died of hunger in a single region over a two-day period. He guessed that more than 6 million people in his country, or just about half the population, are faced with a food shortage because of a deepening drought.

In South Sudan, two counties are in a “phase five” famine situation, according to a determination rating system our Goats and Soda team looked into last month. That’s the worst possible rating, and it means at least two out of every 10,000 people are dying of hunger there every day. Overall, 42 percent of the population in South Sudan is estimated to be food insecure.

The country has been entrenched in civil war since December 2013.

And in Nigeria, the fallout from fighting with extremist terror group Boko Haram has left pockets of the country decimated, as NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reported last month.