Which region suffers the most with hunger

Timor-Leste has made progress in decreasing hunger levels, cutting undernutrition rates by nearly half over the last 20 years. While the progress is positive, the reality remains overwhelming. Timor-Leste is home to the second-highest child stunting rate of The last few years have seen a humanitarian crisis in Haiti that has repeatedly threatened food security.

Approximately These numbers do not yet depict the impact of the 7. Climate change and extreme weather events also continue to halt progress in Haiti , where 2. These events, even those in the past, have formed a complex emergency in the country with regards to food security and hunger. Several countries are not included in the Global Hunger Index due to insufficient data to calculate their GHI scores which factor in undernourishment rates for the full population as well as child wasting, stunting, and mortality rates.

Based on available data, we estimate that the following countries would rank somewhere between Liberia and Madagascar in terms of hunger and undernutrition levels: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger , Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Of the countries on the GHI, Madagascar is one of five with alarming levels of hunger. However, Madagascar is the only country within this segment that is not experiencing conflict. Not only has Madagascar had one of the five highest rates of total undernourishment The security situation worsened in several provinces in the east in , leaving 5.

The family received food kits for short term assistance, and seeds to augment their existing agricultural work. Seraphin hopes the extra harvest and crops will serve the family well, and provide a means for his families future. Ranked as the hungriest country in and a mainstay on previous hungriest country rankings , Chad assumes the fourth position in this list, with Driven by conflict and weather extremes, the rate of child stunting is While faced with instability itself, Chad is also a host community for refugees many fleeing conflict from neighboring countries including Nigeria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

For the estimated , refugees currently residing in Chad, adequate food and nutrition is a chief concern. A Concern worker checks a young child for malnutrition. With the lack of diverse foods in the region, many children end up with malnutrition with little options for treatment. Forty percent of children are stunted, 5. CAR has been engaged in a civil war since , and although a peace deal was signed in , the situation is still fragile and volatile, with renewed violence by rebel groups posing a threat to the country Semba The main drivers of food insecurity in CAR are violence and civil insecurity and the associated displacement of the population; market disruption caused by the COVID pandemic, worsened by supply chain blockages perpetrated by armed groups; and low agricultural production, itself exacerbated by instability in the country IPC a.

Chad has the fourth-highest GHI score in this report— With an under-five mortality rate of Food insecurity in Chad is driven by conflict, insecurity, and weather extremes, exacerbated by the impact of the COVID pandemic. With a GHI score of Although DRC experienced its first peaceful transition of presidential power in , it still faces steep challenges along the path to development IFAD The security situation worsened in several eastern provinces in Violence has led to high levels of displacement: at the end of , 5.

Madagascar is the only country with an alarming GHI score Its undernourishment rate, at Despite committing to the goal of achieving Zero Hunger by , too many countries are still experiencing increasing hunger. In the case of several of these countries with moderate GHI scores, this result indicates a stagnation of progress along the path toward low hunger or Zero Hunger.

Ecuador and South Africa, for example, experienced substantial declines in hunger between and , only to see their progress halted and partially reversed according to their scores. For those countries with alarming levels of hunger that are experiencing rising hunger—Central African Republic, Madagascar, and Yemen—these increases represent intensification of already dangerous situations. The status of each of the GHI indicators the prevalence of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality provides insight into the particular nature of hunger in each country see Figure 1.

For example, Haiti, with a GHI score of To address its child nutrition challenges, Timor-Leste must tackle underlying issues by increasing dietary diversity and consumption of nutritious foods; improving the water, sanitation, and hygiene WASH environment; empowering women; and scaling up community-based management of acute malnutrition programming Bonis-Profumo, McLaren, and Fanzo There are several success stories of countries that have reduced hunger substantially over recent years and decades Figure 1.

Fourteen countries have seen a 25 percent reduction or more between their and GHI scores. For example, Bangladesh has experienced an impressive decline in GHI scores since , dropping from Its child stunting rate fell substantially in recent decades, from Mongolia has decreased its GHI score by over 50 percent between its and scores, falling to a GHI score of 6. When data are available on the impact of the pandemic on child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality, and as data on the prevalence of undernourishment increasingly show the effects of the pandemic, it will be important to consider these effects on the progress of Mongolia and other countries that have experienced recent gains.

The GHI is best suited to measure hunger over recent years and decades, while other tools are better suited to real-time assessments and short-term projections of hunger. The former allow for the identification of crises and the pinpointing of immediate needs, while the latter show trends in hunger and undernutrition over time. Click to enlarge:. Inequality of child nutrition is pervasive, and children are suffering from inadequate diets and suboptimal health in all corners of the world.

Figure 1. For each country with available data, this figure shows the stunting rates for the states or areas with the highest and lowest stunting levels, as well as the national average—the longer the black line, the wider the disparity in stunting rates within the country.

In addition to inequality in nutrition and health, the size of the within-country gap in stunting levels results from several factors, such as the number of states or provinces into which a country is split for the sake of the survey, the national population size and land area, and the average national stunting level. Even within countries on the low end of the stunting range, such as Cuba and Turkey, stunting levels in some areas are near 20 percent.

Subnational child wasting data reveal countries where moderate national averages obscure high or very high levels of acute child undernutrition. In Cameroon, for example, the — child wasting rate averaged 4. The northern areas of the country have higher levels of poverty, are more affected by conflict, receive more refugees from neighboring countries, and are more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of the country World Bank Child mortality levels are also uneven within country borders, indicating that the chances of child survival can be vastly different depending on the state or department in which one lives.

A recent compilation of subnational child mortality data reveals that of 22 countries in Africa and South Asia, Nigeria has the largest disparity in under-five mortality. Progress in reducing child mortality can also vary within countries. The prevalence of undernourishment is not regularly calculated at the subnational level, but nascent efforts to do so have begun and reveal subnational variation.

In Pakistan, for example, the — rates ranged from In Viet Nam, the prevalence of undernourishment in ranged from 8. In part because the prevalence of undernourishment is included in the monitoring framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, capacity-building efforts are underway to enable national governments to calculate the prevalence of undernourishment for their countries, including at subnational levels, and these efforts have the potential to increase the availability of these data FAO Inequality within countries is a persistent challenge, made more urgent by the movement restrictions and service disruptions associated with the COVID pandemic.

While the full impact of the COVID pandemic on inequality is yet to be understood, there are initial indications that inequality could worsen along multiple dimensions. For example, the pandemic may exacerbate gender inequality, a chronic and pervasive issue. The gender gap in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity increased during the pandemic; this rate is now 10 percent higher among women than among men FAO, IFAD et al. Each of these aspects of gender inequality has the potential to increase food insecurity and undernutrition in the long run.

Hunger and undernutrition tend to be higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but it is unclear how the COVID pandemic will affect this dynamic in the long term. A comparison of food insecurity according to the Food Insecurity Experience Scale FIES in urban and rural Mali before and during the COVID pandemic shows that in the early months of the pandemic in , food insecurity increased more in urban areas than in rural areas, erasing the previous rural-urban gap in food insecurity.

Urban survey respondents attributed the increase to the pandemic. Urban areas were more severely disrupted by the pandemic given the stricter social distancing measures practiced in densely populated cities. In addition, the pandemic hit at a point in the agricultural cycle when postharvest processing was the predominant activity, negatively affecting economic activity in urban areas more than in rural areas Adjognon et al. By contrast, a short-term effect of the pandemic in Nigeria was a greater increase in food insecurity among households in remote and conflict-affected areas rather than urban areas.

Although households in urban areas experienced a greater drop in economic activity, this did not result in a significant reduction in food security Amare et al. Now more than ever, it is clear that the world is not on track to achieve the goal of Zero Hunger by and that past gains have been built on an unsustainable foundation. While eliminating current conflict seems out of reach, we can make incremental steps toward breaking the cycle of hunger and conflict by recognizing and committing to address the unique challenges facing food systems in conflict settings.

Through mitigation and adaptation measures, the devastation of global climate change could be lessened or even stopped. Although the COVIDinduced recession has been extreme and unique in many ways, economic downturns are inevitable and will require better, more universally available safety nets to prevent hunger and malnutrition in the future.

We live in a world of challenges and shocks, and our food systems must be built to withstand and recover from these challenges in ways that deliver food and nutrition security for all people. Hunger and malnutrition do not continue for want of solutions, but rather for want of the political will and resources to implement the solutions at hand and to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to food.

Conflict is a primary driver of hunger. Along with climate extremes and economic downturns, conflict is one of the key factors driving food insecurity and malnutrition worldwide FAO, IFAD et al. In Africa, countries with high levels of conflict, as measured by conflict-related fatalities, have higher GHI scores and fare worse for each of the GHI indicators than countries with low levels of conflict see figure below.

The nature of conflict and conflict-driven hunger is changing. The rate of stunting children too short for their age as a result of chronic malnutrition fell from 33 percent of children under age five in to What causes hunger? Hunger Fast Facts There is more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet.

As many as million people worldwide go to bed hungry each night. Small farmers, herders, and fishermen produce about 70 percent of the global food supply, yet they are especially vulnerable to food insecurity — poverty and hunger are most acute among rural populations.

Conflict is a cause and consequence of hunger. In , conflict was the primary driver of hunger for The world needs a better way to deal with hunger. We're creating it. For everyone. For good. Our programs reached more than 25 million people in nearly 50 countries in For Action.

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