Hunger levels will remain high in many of the world’s poorest countries for another 136 years in the absence of more progress in measures to tackle the issue, according to the latest global assessment.
The 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI) published on Thursday found at least 64 countries will not reach even low hunger levels until the year 2160, if progress to address hunger remains at the same pace as since 2016.
Hunger levels are at “serious” or “alarming” levels in 42 countries while progress in addressing it has stagnated.
Conflicts over the past year have led to exceptional food crises and raised the spectre of famine in countries and territories such as Gaza and Sudan – where there is already famine in the North Darfur region, the GHI warns.
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The report – published by Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide and German aid agency Welthungerhilfe – concludes the chances of achieving zero hunger by 2030, a sustainable development goal set by UN member states in 2012, are “grim” and unlikely.
The GHI, now in its 19th year, scores countries using a 100-point severity-of-hunger scale based on undernourishment levels, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality – the share of children who die before their fifth birthday, partly reflecting the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.
Of 136 countries examined, 36 have levels considered serious while six at the bottom of the index have alarming hunger levels, “indicating widespread human misery, undernourishment and malnutrition”. They are Somalia, Yemen, Chad, Madagascar, Burundi and South Sudan.
In 2023, 281.6 million people in 59 countries and territories faced crisis-level or acute food insecurity including Gaza, Sudan, Haiti and Burkina Faso. The 2024 findings show Africa south of the Sahara and south Asia are the regions with the worst levels of hunger.
There was notable progress in tackling hunger between 2000 and 2016, it adds, indicating how much can be accomplished in just a decade and a half – however it notes this progress has slowed since.
“The findings in the latest GHI report are extremely worrying and upsetting,” said Concern’s chief executive David Regan. “The world should not have to wait over 136 years for low hunger levels to be achieved. More must be done to guarantee everyone has the right to food so that we can prevent famine and treat malnutrition early.”
“We should not have situations where children are so hungry and malnourished that they can’t even speak or cry,” he added.
Globally, some 733 million people face hunger each day due to a lack of access to a sufficient amount of food, while about 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.
“That hunger persists on such a huge scale with all the resources in the modern world is deeply troubling,” Mr Regan said. “It is also alarming that progress made in addressing hunger has stalled largely due to widespread conflicts, and the increasing impacts of climate change. Acute food insecurity and the risk of famine are rising and starvation is proliferating as a weapon of war.”
The report highlights the links between gender inequality, food insecurity and climate change, showing how these challenges combine and put households, communities and countries under extreme stress.
“Inequality is amplified when living in extreme poverty,” Mr Regan said. “Governments must invest in and promote gender equality and climate change – and recognise and deliver on the right to food so that all people are assured the right to food.”
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