A wake-up call to fight hunger

Even though today's global food production is enough to feed everyone on the planet, hunger continues to increase in some parts of the world. Despite some recent progress in reducing hunger globally, the world is still facing food crises in many regions, especially in Africa and western Asia, where the situation is dire.

The UN agencies that deal with food security use specific terms to describe the various levels of food scarcity using words such as hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition. Let’s take a look at what they mean.

Explaining hunger and food insecurity

The (FAO) describes hunger as an uncomfortable or painful physical sensation caused by insufficient consumption of dietary energy. This physical sensation may become chronic when the person does not consume a sufficient number of calories regularly to lead a normal, active and healthy life.

On the other hand, a person can fall into the food insecure category when there is a lack of regular access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life. This condition may be due to unavailability of food and/or lack of resources to obtain food. Food insecurity can be experienced at different levels of severity: mild, moderate or severe.

Malnutrition can be either undernutrition, or the other extreme – overweight and obesity. Both are worrying trends that coexist in the world today.

In children undernutrition can cause stunting and wasting. Stunting is insufficient height for a child’s age, while wasting is insufficient weight for the child’s height. Stunting is a measure of chronic nutritional deficiency, while wasting is a measure of acute nutritional deficiency.

What is the link between hunger and food insecurity?

When someone reaches a severely food insecure condition, it implies that has run out of food and gone a day or more without eating, explains the UN agency. Although severe food insecurity is at the end of the FAO scale, even moderate food insecurity is an alarming condition.

For those who are moderately food insecure, acquiring food is unpredictable. They might have to sacrifice other basic needs, just to be able to eat. When they do eat, it might be whatever is most readily available or cheapest, which might not be the most nutritious food.

The increase in obesity and other forms of malnutrition is partly due to this phenomenon, since highly processed foods are energy-dense, contain high saturated fats, sugars and salt, and are often cheaper and easier to get than fresh fruits and vegetables.

Eating highly processed foods may provide enough calories to meet daily requirements, but it can lead to a deficiency of essential nutrients that are required for the healthy functioning of the body. In addition to the stress caused by uncertain access to food, going through periods without eating can also lead to significant physiological changes.

FAO warns that children who experience hunger, food insecurity, and undernutrition are at a higher risk of developing chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and other health problems later in life.

Food Security improves slightly in 2024, but multiple crises threaten a reversal

According to the 2025 edition of the report, an estimated , -about 673 million people- experienced hunger in 2024. This represents a decrease of 15 million people from 2023 and 22 million from 2022.  

 While the global decline is encouraging, the latest estimates remain above pre-pandemic levels and the progress has been uneven across regions. Notable improvements are seen in southern Asia and Latin America. In Asia, the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) declined from 7.9 percent in 2022 to 6.7 percent in 2024. Similarly, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the PoU fell to 5.1 percent in 2024, down from a peak of 6.1 percent in 2020.

In contrast, hunger has continued to rise across Africa and Western Asia, particularly in countries affected by prolonged food crises and conflicts. In Africa, the proportion of the population experiencing hunger surpassed 20 percent in 2024, affecting about 307 million people. In Western Asia, an estimated 12.7 percent of the population—more than 39 million people—faced hunger in the same year. 

Ongoing conflicts and crises worldwide, together with the high food inflation experienced in recent years, continue to create uncertainty and are slowing the recovery in global food security—if not contributing to further deterioration.

Apart from hunger, the report also highlights that 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. Over 2.6 billion people could not afford a healthy diet. Many children under five suffer from malnutrition. Exclusive breastfeeding has improved, but more effort is needed to meet the malnutrition targets by 2030.

The rural-urban divide needs to be better understood

The assessment also emphasizes the impact of urbanization on agrifood systems, with almost seven in ten people projected to live in cities by 2050. Governments and policymakers must consider urbanization trends and their effects on food security, hunger, and malnutrition.

Although food insecurity affects more people in rural areas, consumption of highly processed foods is increasing in peri-urban and rural areas.

Children’s malnutrition also reveals urban and rural specificities: the prevalence of child stunting is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, as it is for wasting. At the same time, overweight is slightly more prevalent in urban areas compared to rural areas.

 

The Sustainable Development Goals and food

Food is at the core of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN's development agenda for the 21st century. The second of the UN's 17 SDGs is to "." Achieving this goal by the target date of 2030 will require a profound change of the global food and agriculture system. Some of the components of this goal are:

  • Ending hunger, and ensuring access by all people to safe, nutritious food;
  • Ending all forms of malnutrition;
  • Doubling the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers;
  • Ensuring sustainable food production systems;
  • Increasing investment in agriculture;
  • Correcting and preventing trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets;
  • Adopting measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets.

Facts and figures on Hunger and nutrition

  • 8.2% of the the world’s population-about 673 million people- lives with chronic hunger.
  • 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.
  • Africa: about 1 in 5 people face hunger — the highest regional prevalence.
  • Globally, about one-third of children aged 6 to 23 months and two-thirds of women aged 15 to 49 years achieved minimum dietary diversity.
  • Globally, there are 150.2 million children under 5 affected by stunting (refers to a child who is too short for his or her age), suffering severe irreversible physical and cognitive damage. There are also 42.8 million children under 5 suffering from wasting, of which 12.2 million have severe wasting, Wasting is the result of recent rapid weight loss or the failure to gain weight.
  • High food price inflation may worsen food security, particularly in low-income countries. A 10 percent increase in food prices is associated with a 3.5 percent rise in moderate or severe food insecurity, and a 1.8 percent increase in severe food insecurity.
  • By 2030, around 512 million people may still be chronically undernourished if current trends continue. Almost 60 percent of those will be in Africa.

 

UN agencies working for food security

World Food Programme

The , aims to bring food assistance to more than 80 million people in 80 countries and is continually responding to emergencies. But WFP also works to help prevent hunger in the future. They do this through programmes that use food to build assets, spread knowledge and nurture stronger, more dynamic communities. This helps communities become more food secure.

World Bank

Investment in agriculture and rural development to boost food production and nutrition is a priority for the . The World Bank Group works with partners to improve food security and build a food system that can feed everyone, everywhere, every day. Activities include encouraging climate-smart farming techniques and restoring degraded farmland, breeding more resilient and nutritious crops and improving storage and supply chains for reducing food losses.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Achieving food security for all is at the heart of the efforts of the . Its main purpose is to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. Its three main goals: the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition; the elimination of poverty and the driving forward of economic and social progress for all; and, the sustainable management and utilization of natural resources, including land, water, air, climate and genetic resources for the benefit of present and future generations. FAO also issues the , which is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities.

International Fund for Agricultural Development

The  has focused exclusively on rural poverty reduction, working with poor rural populations in developing countries to eliminate poverty, hunger and malnutrition, raise their productivity and incomes, and improve the quality of their lives. All IFAD-funded programmes and projects address food and nutrition security in some way. IFAD has supported about 483 million poor rural people over the past four decades.

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