Protracted conflicts affecting 17 countries have driven millions of people into severe food insecurity and are hindering global efforts to eradicate malnutrition, two UN agencies have warned in a report submitted to the UN Security Council. A new series of 17 country briefs prepared by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) finds that conflicts have now pushed over 56 million people into either "crisis" or "emergency" levels of food insecurity when expressed in terms used by the Integrated Food Security Classification Phase (IPC) scale. Topping the list in terms of the sheer numbers of people whose food security is being negatively impacted by ongoing conflict are Yemen, where 14 million people - over half the population - are now in a state of hunger crisis or emergency on the IPC scale, and Syria, where 8.7 million people - 37 percent of the pre-conflict population - need urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.